Skip to main content

Full text of "The conquest of death"

See other formats 


HE 


CONQUEST 
EATH 


HELEN  WILMAN5 


Ex  Libris 
C.  K.  OGDEN 


\; 


* 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


Uniform  with  this  volume,  price  4s.  6d.  net 
LIMITLESS     MAN 

BY  HELEN  WILMANS 

In  this  volume,  continuing  the  subject  dealt  with  in 
"The  Conquest  of  Death,"  the  Author  treats  of  The 
Action  between  Brain  and  Body — Man  One 
and  Indivisible — Man's  Destiny  in  his  own 
Hands — The  Power  of  the  Life  Principle — 
From  Selfishness  to  Selfhood — Expectation 
— Doubt — A  Conquest  of  Fire  by  the  Human 
Body — Thought  as  a  Force— The  Develop- 
ment of  Will — The  Will  is  the  Individual 
— The  Uses  of  Beauty,  etc. 

[  Ready  Shortly. 

THE   CREATIVE   POWER   OF 
THOUGHT 

BY  HELEN  WILMANS 

Containing  Chapters  on  Courage — Length  of 
Life  Increasing — Life  Expressed  in  Action 
— Believing — How  to  Grow — The  Substan- 
tiality ok  Thought — Mental  Science  the 
true  Interpreter  of  the  Bible  —  Man  a 
Magnet— Whatever  is,  is  Right,  etc. 

(/«  the  Press. 


LONDON:    ERNEST    HELL 


THE    CONQUEST   OF    DEATH 


§h  Vorld,  stock  as  <l#  have  give 


THE 


Conquest  of  Death 


HELEN      WILMANS 

Author  of  "Home  Course  in  Mental  Science," 

"The  Search  for  Freedom,"  "The  Conquest  of 

Poverty,"  etc. 


'  Out  of  the  night  that  skelters  me. 
Black  as  the  pit  from  pole  to  pole, 
I  thank  whatever  gods  there  be 
/■\>r  mv  unconquerable  soul." 


LONDON 

ERNEST    BELL 

YORK    STREET,    COVENT    GARDEN 

I902 


PS  4c. 


PREFACE 

THE  strangeness  of  the  title  of  this  work, 
"  The  Conquest  of  Death,"  will  doubtless  prompt 
some,  into  whose  hands  it  may  chance  to  fall, 
to  lay  it  down  without  reading  ;  for  the  con- 
quest of  death,  they  say,  is  impossible.  Yet, 
who  knows  if  it  be  so  or  not? 

The  Author  of  this  work  has  discovered  that 
the  conquest  of  death  is  altogether  within  the 
law,  and  has  sought  herein  to  give  some  reasons 
for  her  belief,  which  she  knows  to  be  worthy 
of  the  highest  consideration  of  all  the  people. 

THE  AUTHOR. 


To  think  in  the  old  ruts  is  to  remain  in 
the  old  conditions. 

To  think  expansively  is  to  grow  endlessly 
in  the  direction  of  freedom  and  happiness. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.    CAN    DEATH    BE   OVERCOME?  ...  I 

II.    THE    WRITERS    OF    THE    BIBLE    BELIEVED 

THAT   DEATH    COULD    BE   OVERCOME  8 

III.  IMMORTALITY      IN      THE      FLESH      RESTS 

UPON  THE  FACT  THAT  THE 
HIGHEST  ALWAYS  HAS  POWER  TO 
CONTROL    ALL    BELOW    IT  .  .  1 4 

IV.  FROM     THE     STANDPOINT     OF     PERSONAL 

EXPERIENCE    .  .  .  .  .  1 9 

V.    THE    EFFORT    OF    JESUS     TO     OVERCOME 

DEATH     ......  26 

VI.  HOW  I  TRIED  TO  BOLSTER  UP  MY  HOPE 
BY  SEARCHING  FOR  OTHERS  WHO 
WOULD    BELIEVE    IN    IT     .  .  .  32 

VII.  THE  GROWTH  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION  IN 
THE  DIRECTION  OF  THE  CONQUEST 
OF    DEATH  .  .  .  .  .  41 

VIII.    EVERY     HOPE     IS     THE     SURE     PROPHECY 

OF    ITS   OWN    FULFILMENT  .  .  52 

IX.    THE     KNDLESS     CREATIVENESS     OF     THE 

HUMAN    INTELLIGENCE      ...  62 

X.  ALL  GROWTH  IS  A  REVOLT  AGAINST 
THE  CLAIMS  OF  THE  SO-CALLED 
LAW    OF    GRAVITATION       .  .  .  77 


x  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

XI.    THE      ONE      MIGHTY      FACTOR      IN      RACE 

GROWTH    IS    THOUGHT        ...  85 

XII.  MAN  HAS  NO  FETTERS  BUT  THOSE  OF 
HIS  OWN  IGNORANCE:  AND  NOTHING 
BUT  HIS  OWN  INTELLIGENCE  WILL 
LIBERATE    HIM    FROM    THEM      .  .  91 

XIII.  DESIRE   THE    ORGANISING    PRINCIPLE         .  107 

XIV.  BELIEFS:    BOTH    FIXED    AND    UNFIXED       .  121 
XV.    THE    LAW    OF    ATTRACTION       .             .  I  26 

XVI.    THE    EGO 132 

XVII.    ENDLESS     PROGRESSION  :     ITS     RETARDA- 
TION   BY    FEAR  .  .  .  .148 

XVIII.    MAN'S    POWER   TO    SPEAK   THE   CREATIVE 

WORD:    EVOLUTION    OF    THE    IDEAL.  1 59 

XIX.  HEALTH  AND  STRENGTH  AND  BEAUTY 
AX  I)  OPULENCE  ARE  TO  BE  FOUND 
IN  GREATER  FULNESS  IN  THIS  NEW 
AND  WONDERFUL  THOUGHT  THAN 
IN  ANYTHING  ELSE  IX  THE  WHOLE 
WORLD    .  .  .  .  .  .178 


THE    CONQUEST    OF    DEATH 
CHAPTER    I 

CAN    DEATH    BE   OVERCOME  ? 

To  many,  probably  the  majority  of  people, 
the  question,  "  Can  death  be  overcome  ? "  will 
appear  a  foolish  one,  and  a  person  a  foolish 
person  who  would,  in  seriousness,  ask  it, 
expecting  a  serious  answer.  Yet  the  question 
has  been  asked  in  all  seriousness  by  some  of 
the  greatest  minds  the  world  has  known,  and 
one  whom  the  Christian  world  regards  most 
highly  has  answered  it  affirmatively,  if  not 
with  absolute  directness.  He  said,  "  The  last 
enemy  that  shall  be  overcome  is  death." 

Where  is  one  to  whom  has  been  given 
rightful  authority  to  interpret  this  saying  of 
St  Paul  as  meaning  other  than  what  he  says 
— that  when  man  should  have  overcome  all 
other  enemies,  should  have  learned  the  law  of 
the  lightning  and  have  harnessed  it ;  when 
the  winds  and  the  waves  had  become  his 
servants,  and  did  his  bidding ;  when  on  land 
A 


2  CAN    DEATH 

and  on  sea  man  commanded  the  forces  in 
nature,  and  was  master  over  the  elements, 
which,  in  his  more  ignorant  state,  he  conceived 
to  be  engines  of  the  gods,  who  used  them  in 
their  anger  for  his  destruction  —  who  has 
authority  or  where  is  the  reasonableness  in 
saying  that  Paul  did  not  mean  to  express  that 
when  man  had  thus  far  conquered  he  should 
also  conquer  death  ?  I  insist  that  the  language 
quoted  can,  in  reason,  be  given  no  other  mean- 
ing, and  has  been  otherwise  construed  simply 
because  the  mass  of  humanity  has  been  unable 
to  conceive  of  the  possibility  of  immortality 
in  the  flesh,  and  so  has  been  compelled,  since 
it  felt  that  it  might  not  reject  the  saying,  to 
attribute  to  it  a  meaning  other  than  that 
which  it  was  evidently  intended  by  its  author 
to  convey. 

Death  is  everywhere  and  universally  under- 
stood to  mean  the  dissolution  of  a  bodily  form. 
Where  form  does  not  exist  there  can  be  no 
dissolution,  no  death.  It  is  absolutely  certain, 
then,  that  when  the  apostle  used  the  word,  he 
did  so  because  of  the  meaning  which  attached 
to  it,  and  must,  therefore,  have  meant  one  of 
two  things — either  that  men  would  eventually 
learn  the  law  by  which  life  could  be  perpetu- 
ated in  these  bodies  indefinitely,  or  that  there 


BE   OVERCOME  ?  3 

existed  spiritual  bodies  which  were  subject  to 
dissolution  and  death,  but  which  might  be  some 
time,  though  they  were  not  yet,  able  to  over- 
come death. 

This  latter  supposition,  that  the  spiritual 
body,  of  which  the  theologians  make  so  much, 
is  subject  to  death,  is  altogether  antagonistic 
to  the  teachings  of  every  religious  organisa- 
tion founded  upon  the  Bible  ;  and,  since  there 
are  but  two  horns  to  the  dilemma,  it  is  to  be 
hoped  that  in  deciding  between  them  theology 
will  accept  the  former  and  concede  that  which 
is  altogether  the  most  reasonable  ;  namely,  that 
Paul  intended  to  be  understood  as  referring 
to  our  present  fleshly  bodies  when  he  said 
death  should  finally  be  overcome. 

The  writer  of  this  is  not  a  theologian — not, 
at  least,  in  the  commonly  accepted  meaning 
of  the  word.  She  does  not  believe  that  all 
wisdom  resided  in  those  men  who  lived  two 
thousand  years  ago,  or  that  it  died  with  them. 
She  does  believe,  however,  that  there  were 
minds  in  those  days,  as  in  more  recent  times, 
whose  grasp  of  natural  law  so  far  exceeded 
that  of  the  mass  of  humanity  as  to  make  their 
utterances  unintelligible  to  other  than  the  very 
few.  The  same  condition  of  things  exists 
to-day,  though  in  a  much  less  marked  degree, 


4  CAN    DEATH 

the  general  diffusion  of  knowledge  and  the  com- 
mingling of  men  and  of  nations  having  lifted 
the  race  to  a  plane  so  much  above  that  upon 
which  it  stood  two  thousand  years  ago,  as  to  have 
gone  far  toward  obliterating  the  line  between 
the  most  illumined  of  minds  and  the  man)-. 

But,  though  the  line  of  demarcation  is  less 
distinct,  it  still  exists,  and  exists  largely 
because  of  the  tendency  of  the  race  to  cling 
to  old  ways  and  old  habits  of  thought,  reject- 
ing the  new,  simply  because  it  is  new,  and 
which,  because  it  is  new,  appears  strange  and 
improbable. 

The  tendency  toward  investigation,  due  to 
the  wonderful  discoveries  and  inventions  made 
within  the  last  half  of  the  century,  has,  how- 
ever, so  increased  in  all  directions  and  among 
all  classes — even  the  most  stubborn  adherents 
to  ancient  lines  of  thought — that  no  one  need 
longer  fear  being  considered  mad  who  advances 
a  new  idea,  provided  he  can  sustain  his  pro- 
position by  a  fair  show  of  fact  or  logic  ;  and 
it  is  because  of  this  fact  that  I  anticipate  at 
least  a  respectful  and  thoughtful  considera- 
tion of  my  work  at  the  hands  of  the  public. 
Conceding  that  I  am  off  main-travelled  roads, 
I  yet  insist  that  I  am  not  only  travelling  in 
the  right  direction,  as  designated  by  the  com- 


BE   OVERCOME  ?  5 

pass  of  reason,  backed  by  logic,  and  not 
unsupported  by  fact,  but  that  the  way  has 
been  blazed  by  others  who  have  preceded  me 
in  other  centuries.  I  would  not  have  it  under- 
stood that  I  care  very  greatly  whether  anybody 
has  ever  passed  along  this  way  before,  for  I 
do  not  value  truth  because  of  its  long  residence 
among  men  ;  but  I  wish  to  give  credit  where 
credit  is  due,  and,  further,  I  am  not  above 
quoting  precedent,  if  thereby  I  can  gain  a 
more  attentive  audience.  I  believe  most 
sincerely  that  heaven  is  a  condition,  and  not 
a  place,  and  that  it  cannot  be  attained  while 
the  fear  of  death  exists ;  death,  which  is 
nothing  less  than  the  removal  by  force,  and 
without  their  consent,  or  of  that  of  their 
friends,  of  human  beings  from  all  their  associa- 
tions and  interests  just  when  they  are  best 
prepared  to  be  of  most  service  to  themselves 
and  to  the  world. 

If  the  reader  likes,  he  may  consider  these 
writings  as  a  protest  against  such  a  condition 
of  things  ;  but  I  would  wish  him  to  first  ask 
himself  if  he  is  satisfied  with  such  conditions, 
and  if  he  knows  as  an  absolute  certainty  that 
the  power  through  which  he  came  to  exist  as 
an  individual  is  incapable  of  continuing,  or  has 
any  settled  objection  to  his  continued  existence- 


6  CAN    DEATH 

The  author  of  this  work  believes  it  entirely 
possible  for  the  human  race  to  overcome  death. 
She  believes  that  Jesus  believed  it,  and  that 
both  before  and  since  his  time  there  have 
been  others  who  believed  in  and  sought  for 
the  overcoming  of  death,  and  that  it  will  yet 
be  attained.  That  it  has  not  been  is  no 
argument  to  prove  that  it  will  not  be.  A 
very  great  many  things  that  have  not  yet 
been  proven  will  be  some  time.  We  knew 
little  about  steam  or  steam-engines,  electricity 
or  magnetism,  or  sound  waves  or  the  ether  a 
century  ago.  And  the  most  we  now  know 
about  some  of  them  is  that  there  is  much 
more  to  be  learned  than  we  yet  know.  We 
are  only  just  beginning  to  get  under  the 
blanket  beneath  which  Nature  has  hidden  her 
secrets  ;  just  beginning  to  learn  a  little  some- 
thing about  her  and  about  ourselves.  We 
are  her  children,  the  eldest  and  best  beloved 
of  our  mother  —  the  immortal,  the  deathless. 
Shall  she  not  impart  the  secret  of  life  to  us, 
if  by  diligence  in  searching  and  faithfulness 
in  obeying  we  prove  worthy  ? 

Most  implicitly  do  I  believe  so. 

When  I  say  I  believe  it  possible  to  overcome 
death  and  continue  to  live  in  our  bodies,  I  do 
not    mean    that    our    bodies    must,  necessarily, 


BE   OVERCOME?  7 

continue  exactly  as  they  are.  It  is  reasonable 
to  suppose  that  they  will  gradually  refine  and 
become  more  beautiful,  and  that  other  senses 
than  the  five  we  now  possess  will  develop,  and 
men  become  more  perfect  in  every  way, 
physically,  mentally  and  morally.  This  will 
be  a  growth,  as  all  things  else  are,  but  growth 
will  be  much  more  rapid,  though  endless,  when 
the  fear  of  death  has  been  removed  through  a 
knowledge  of  the  law  whereby  life  may  be 
sustained  indefinitely. 


CHAPTER    II 

THE   WRITERS  OF   THE  BIBLE   BELIEVED   THAT 
DEATH   COULD   BE   OVERCOME 

If  we  are  to  give  credit,  as  I  suggested,  to 
those  who  before  us  sought  to  blaze  the  way 
to  continued  existence  in  our  present  bodies, 
we  must  begin  with  the  author  of  the  Book  of 
Genesis.  Turn  now  to  that  book  of  the  Bible, 
and  read  that  man  was,  according  to  the  account 
there  given,  created  immortal ;  that  for  eating  of 
the  forbidden  fruit  he  was  condemned  to  die. 
Death  must  here  refer  to  the  body  ;  if  not,  then 
it  could  only  mean  annihilation — the  absence  of 
any  future  life  whatever.  If  this  latter  con- 
struction be  put  upon  it,  it  would  utterly 
annihilate  every  proposition  put  forward  by 
the  theologians,  and  remove  every  stone  of  the 
foundation  upon  which  rests  the  Christian 
church  ;  nor  would  the  Mohammedans  fare 
better. 

It  would  mean  the  rankest  of  materialism  ; 
for,  if  to  die  meant  the  death  of  what  remained 
after  the  dissolution  of  the  body,  there  could 
be    nothing    upon   which    to   base   a   theory  of 

S 


THE   WRITERS   OF   THE   BIBLE  9 

salvation,  since  there  would  be  nothing  to  save. 
Hence,  when  it  was  said  to  our  first  parents  (as 
reported  in  Genesis,  chap.  2,  v.  17),  "But  of  the 
tree  of  the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil,  thou 
shalt  not  eat  of  it,  for  in  the  day  that  thou 
eatest  thereof  thou  shalt  surely  die,"  it  must 
have  referred  to  the  death  of  the  fleshly  body. 
If  he  did  not  eat  of  the  tree  of  knowledge  of 
good  and  evil — that  is,  if  he  did  not  violate 
the  law  of  his  being,  and  so  become  conscious 
of  being  out  of  harmony  with  it,  he  would 
continue  always  to  live  ;  if  he  did  do  this,  he 
would  die. 

I  am  not  now  arguing  the  inspired  character 
of  the  Bible,  nor  do  I  intend  to  do  so  in  any 
part  of  this  work  ;  let  that  be  as  it  may,  and 
let  each  student  of  it  judge  for  himself. 
Whether  it  is  divinely  inspired  or  not  is  not 
a  vital  issue  in  this  connection.  Neither  is  it 
of  vast  importance  that  we  agree  as  to  who 
wrote  the  Book  of  Genesis,  or  when  or  where 
it  was  written.  What  I  am  seeking  to  point 
out  is,  that  whoever  the  author  may  have  been, 
and  whether  divinely  inspired  or  not,  he  con- 
ceived man  to  have  been  possessed,  at  his  first 
appearance  upon  earth,  of  the  power  to  con- 
tinue in  the  body  indefinitely ;  that  he  lost  this 
power  through  ignorance  or  failure  to  obey  the 


10  THE   WRITERS 

law  laid  down  for  him  ;  that  thereafter  he  could 
have  regained  immortal  life  in  the  body  and 
become  as  the  gods,  had  he  but  eaten  of  the  tree 
of  life — i.e.  gained  such  knowledge  of  the  law  of 
his  being  as  would  have  put  him  in  harmony  with 
the  one  universal  life.  Put  into  plain  everyday 
language,  the  Bible  statement  is  that  in  ignor- 
ance man  violated  the  law  of  life  and  became 
subject  to  death  ;  but  that  if  he  had  known 
more  ;  if  he  had  known  enough  to  eat  of  the 
tree  of  life,  which  would  have  been  to  come 
into  an  understanding  of  the  law  of  his  being, 
he  could  have  continued  in  the  body  as  long 
as  he  wished,  and  could  then  have  shaped 
things  to  his  liking,  as  the  gods  were  supposed 
to  do. 

That  this  is  the  thought  which  the  authors 
of  Genesis  intended  to  convey  is  made  doubly 
apparent,  when  we  consider  the  fact  that  no- 
where in  the  Old  Testament  is  it  made  clear 
that  its  authors  believed  in  an  existence  of  a 
soul  after  the  death  of  the  body.  This  being 
the  case,  there  is  no  other  possible  construction 
to  be  put  upon  the  language  in  Genesis  other 
than  that  its  authors,  whether  inspired  or  not, 
conceived  it  possible  that  men  might  acquire 
the  knowledge  which  should  enable  them  to 
command    the   life    forces,  and    so   continue  to 


OF   THE   BIBLE  II 

live   in    their   present    bodies  as    long   as   they 
wished. 

The  authors  of  the  Old  Testament,  then, 
were  the  first  to  suggest  the  possibility,  if 
not  to  point  the  way,  to  immortality  in  the 
flesh  through  a  victory  over  death.  That 
Jesus  of  Nazareth  believed  also  in  immortal 
life  in  the  flesh  is  evident  in  the  restoration 
to  life  of  Lazarus  and  others,  and  in  declaring 
that  he  himself  would  return  to  life  (restore 
life  to  his  body)  on  the  third  day,  and  in  the 
repeated  healing  of  diseased  bodies,  which,  if 
not  healed,  must  speedily  have  succumbed  to 
the  disease  by  which  they  were  affected. 

And  now  I  wish  to  ask  the  reader's  thought- 
ful consideration  of  this  proposition.  I  ask  it 
because  of  the  magnitude  of  the  interests  in- 
volved, and  because  I  believe  that  any  who 
may  have  read  thus  far  will  have  become 
sufficiently  interested  to,  at  least,  be  willing 
to  give  the  author  a  hearing,  and  the  subject 
of  which  she  treats  a  thoughtful  consideration. 

The  question  I  wish  to  ask  is  this  :  If  by 
any  purely  mental  process  health  can  be  re- 
stored to  a  diseased  body,  is  it  not  reasonable 
to  suppose  that  the  process  can  be  continued 
indefinitely,  and  health,  which  means  continued 
life,  made  permanent  ?     In  other  words,  if  there 


12  THE   WRITERS 

is  a  law  by  the  application  of  which  disease 
may  be  eliminated  from  the  system  for  a  time, 
may  it  not  be  that  the  effect  can  be  made 
continuous,  and  disease  prevented  from  ever 
causing  the  dissolution  of  the  body? 

I  do  not  forget  that  many — perhaps  most 
people  who  believe  that  Jesus  really  did  heal 
the  sick — believed  that  he  possessed  miraculous 
powers  ;  but  I  would  call  the  attention  of  all 
these  persons  to  his  assertion  that  those  who 
believed  on  him,  or  as  he  did,  should  do  greater 
works  than  he  had  done.  If  he  had  considered 
his  acts  as  outside  of  natural  law,  and  due  to 
some  special  relation  which  he  bore  to  Godhead, 
he  would  not  have  declared  that  others  who 
bore  no  such  special  relation  should  do  greater 
things. 

Let  us  be  logical.  The  interests  at  stake 
are  the  greatest  possible  to  conceive  of,  and 
no  one  among  us  can  afford  to  do  less  than 
to  bring  to  bear  the  best  reasoning  power  of 
which  he  or  she  is  possessed.  Jesus  did  not 
claim  to  heal  the  sick  by  a  power  which  might 
not  be  attained  by  any  one  who  would  follow 
his  instructions,  and  he  did  say  that  others 
who  should  come  after  him  should  do  more 
than  he  had  been  able  to  do. 

Again  I  ask,  if  there  exists  a  law  by  which, 


OF   THE    BIBLE  13 

through  purely  mental  processes,  and  without 
the  use  of  drugs,  diseases  of  the  body  can  be 
removed,  does  it  not  follow  logically  that  when 
we  have  a  fuller  understanding  of  the  law  by 
which  this  is  done,  we  shall  be  able  to  remove 
all  disease  and  continue  life  in  the  body  in- 
definitely? 

Dismissing  as  not  vitally  essential  to  the 
matter  in  hand  at  this  moment  the  question 
of  whether  or  not  Jesus  healed  through  an 
understanding  of  natural  law,  or  by  virtue  of 
a  special  relation  to  a  supreme  power,  I  appeal 
to  the  ten  thousands  of  living  witnesses — people 
who  are  alive  to-day  because  they  have  been 
healed  by  mental  processes  purely,  after  all 
efforts  at  healing  by  drugs  administered  by 
the  most  noted  physicians  had  failed  ;  I  appeal 
to  these  witnesses  to  prove  the  existence  of 
the  law  for  the  healing  of  disease,  and  claim 
that  in  their  evidence  is  conclusive  proof  of  the 
existence  of  a  law,  which,  if  understood  and 
applied,  will  annihilate  disease  and  give  the 
victory  over  death. 


CHAPTER  III 

IMMORTALITY  IN  THE  FLESH  RESTS  UPON  THE 
FACT  THAT  THE  HIGHEST  ALWAYS  HAS 
POWER   TO   CONTROL   ALL   BELOW    IT 

I  AM  far  from  being  alone  in  my  search  for 
immortal  life  in  the  flesh,  or  in  faith  that  it 
can  be  accomplished,  though  all  who  search 
and  hope  have  not  the  courage  to  declare 
their  purpose.  Eminent  physicians  talk  of 
"  increasing  the  tenure  of  life  in  man,"  and 
of  "  a  renewal  of  youth "  after  old  age  shall 
have  stiffened  the  joints  and  lessened  the 
flow  of  the  vital  forces.  To-day,  as  I  laid 
aside  my  pen  to  scan  the  papers  I  found  in 
two  dailies  of  wide  circulation  and  influence 
a  half  page  in  each  devoted  to  accounts  of 
declared  discoveries,  by  a  noted  professor,  of 
a  lymph  that  is  to  renew  youth  in  age,  and 
extend  the  span  of  life  from  three-score  and 
ten  to  many  times  that  number  of  years. 
This  professed  discovery  is  treated  by  the 
great  journals  of  the  land  with  respect,  as 
being  a  thing  that  their  editors   conceived   to 

14 


THE   HIGHEST   HAS   POWER  I  5 

be  possible.  They  do  well  to  give  such  en- 
couragement. Every  honest  searcher  after  a 
knowledge  of  the  hidden  laws  of  being  is 
worthy  of  commendation  and  support,  how- 
ever mistaken  he  may  be  in  his  conclusions, 
or  however  misleading  the  clue  which  he 
follows.  As  in  ancient  times  all  roads  led  to 
Rome,  so,  in  science,  all  research  leads  in  the 
direction  of  ultimate  truth.  The  victory  over 
death  will  never  be  gained  through  the  in- 
troduction into  the  circulation  of  the  blood 
of  any  lymph  or  other  fluid  or  solid  ;  but 
investigation  and  research  bring  an  increase  of 
knowledge,  and  every  advance  in  knowledge 
brings  us  one  step  nearer  the  truth. 

We  concede  to  lymph  and  to  drugs  a 
character,  an  individuality,  and  the  authority 
which  individuality  implies.  Individuality, 
whether  of  the  lowest  or  the  highest  form, 
implies  character  ;  implies  it  in  the  rock  as 
certainly  as  in  the  man.  The  character  of 
any  certain  drug  is  the  same  always,  but  its 
relation  to,  and  power  over,  other  individualities 
vary,  as  the  mental  characteristics  of  individuals 
vary  ;  hence,  the  improbability  of  a  science  of 
medicine.  Prof.  Metchinkoff,  or  another,  may 
discover  a  lymph  or  a  drug  that  will  have 
the  effect  of  helping  to   sustain  life  in  human 


16  THE    HIGHEST    HAS   TOWER 

bodies  beyond  the  present  average  of  years  ; 
but  nothing  except  an  understanding  of  the 
law,  and  a  coming  into  harmony  with  it,  by 
which  means  it  is  possible  to  command  it, 
will  ever  enable  man  to  continue  existence  in 
the  body  at  will.  These  men  are  not  wiser 
in  their  day  and  generation  than  was  Ponce 
de  Leon  in  his.  They  seek  for  the  elixir  of 
youth  at  the  same  fountainhead.  The  only 
difference  between  the  de  Leon  of  15 12  and 
these  searchers  of  1900  for  lymph,  is  that  these 
seek  to  produce  what  he  sought  to  find — a 
combination  of  material  substances  possessing 
the  power  to  remove  the  effects  of  old  age. 
They  search  amiss,  yet  do  they  approach  the 
truth,  who  seek  through  physical  means  to 
preserve  the  physical  body.  For  in  the  last 
analysis  the  physical  is  one  with  the  mental ; 
and  through  searching  they  will  arrive  at  the 
great  truth  that,  though  one  in  essence,  yet 
is  the  physical  but  the  visible  expression  of 
the  mental,  which  latter  is  the  overseer  and 
rules  ;  and  to  it,  and  not  to  the  physical,  must 
the  appeal  be  made  for  the  renewal  of  youth 
and  the  conquest  over  old  age  and  death. 
That  this  is  true  we  have  demonstrated  again 
and  again  by  actual  test.  That  it  is  true  can 
be  logically  demonstrated    to  any  one  capable 


TO   CONTROL   ALL   BELOW  \J 

of  deducing  a  logical  conclusion   from   a  pre- 
sentation of  self-evident  facts. 

For  example,  the  rock  crumbles  beneath  the 
action  of  the  elements  and  becomes  soil ;  slowly, 
but  certainly,  the  soil  becomes  soluble,  and  is 
drawn  into  the  life  of  the  vegetable  whose  roots 
have  found  lodgment  and  a  home  in  its  depth  ; 
the  vegetable  is  consumed  by  man  and  goes 
to  form  the  tissues  of  his  body,  including  the 
brain,  which  evolves  thought,  as  a  flower  gives 
off  perfume ;  is  consumed  in  thought  much  as 
the  body  is  wasted  by  physical  exertion.  By 
a  perfectly  natural  process  the  rock  has  evolved 
into  the  finest  and  most  powerful  element 
possible  to  conceive  of,  proving  beyond  pos- 
sibility of  mistaking  that  the  physical  is  in 
essence  one  with  the  mental.  And  as  of  the 
rock,  so  of  every  other  material  object  per- 
ceived by  the  senses,  including  drugs  of  what- 
ever character  or  class.  They  all  possess 
character,  but  it  is  of  the  crudest,  and  becomes 
nil  when  brought  into  collision  with  the  finer 
forces  on  the  mental  plane.  The  highest 
controls  by  virtue  of  being  highest.  If  this 
were  not  so,  then  there  could  be  no  progress, 
no  growth.  If  the  lowest  had  power  to  com- 
mand the  highest,  then,  indeed,  would  the  race 
be  without  hope,  and  utter  annihilation  and  a 
B 


iS  THE   HIGHEST   HAS   TOWER 

dreamless   sleep   be  of  all    things    most   desir- 
able. 

But  it  is  not  so.  The  higher  forever 
dominates  the  lower ;  and  the  preservation, 
indefinitely  and  at  will,  of  the  coarser  elements 
of  the  body  through  the  action  of  the  finer 
the  mental,  is  possible  of  accomplishment. 


CHAPTER    IV 

FROM   THE   STANDPOINT   OF   PERSONAL 
EXPERIENCE 

I  HAD  written  a  good  many  pages  in  this  book 
— not  those  which  appear  at  the  beginning  as  it 
is  at  present  arranged,  but  others  further  on — 
when  a  friend  asked  permission  to  read  them. 
As  he  was  a  man  whose  literary  ability  I 
greatly  respected,  I  gave  him  the  manuscript. 
When  he  returned  it  he  said,  "  You  must  not 
make  this  a  heavy  book.  You  know  that  it 
is  to  be  the  book  of  life,  and,  therefore,  it  must 
be  a  live  book." 

"  But  how  ?  "  I  asked. 

"  You  must  write  it  from  the  standpoint  of 
your  own  experience,"  he  said.  "  Then  you 
would  put  yourself  in  it,  as  well  as  your 
ideas." 

I  hesitated.  I  am  always  somewhat  daunted 
by  the  charge  of  egoism  ;  and  one  cannot  in- 
troduce one's  self  into  one's  writings  without 
being  open  to  this  accusation. 

Then   I   reflected   a  little  while,  and    I  said, 
19 


20  THE   STANDPOINT 

"  Surely  there  is  nothing  that  holds  the  reader 
like  the  personality  of  the  author.  His  ideas 
may  be  fine,  but  they  are  all  the  finer  if  he 
vitalises  them  by  putting  himself  into  them." 

I  am  not  a  person  to  treat  lightly  such  a 
suggestion  as  my  friend  made.  No  one  places 
more  value  upon  the  word  "  alive "  than  I  do. 
If  I  read  a  book,  it  must  be  a  live  book,  or  I 
lose  interest  in  it  and  cannot  finish  it. 

This  aliveness  is  not  only  the  great  charm  of 
books,  but  of  everything  else.  Artificial  flowers 
can  be  made  quite  as  beautiful  as  the  real  ones, 
but  who  cares  for  them  ?  They  are  not  alive  ; 
they  do  not  call  out  your  affection. 

The  one  charm  above  all  other  charms,  when 
I  see  a  new  face,  may  be  expressed  by  the 
word  "  aliveness."  Beauty  and  even  superior 
intelligence  dwindle  into  insignificance  in  com- 
parison with  the  look  of  vital  power  to  which  I 
am  referring.  After  all,  this  look  of  vital  power 
is  beauty  ;  and  it  is  intelligence,  too  ;  so  my 
comparison  falls  dead. 

I  do  not  think  I  exhibited  more  vitality  than 
other  children  when  I  was  a  child  ;  if  I  did,  it 
was  not  in  the  ordinary  way,  for  I  never  climbed 
a  tree  in  my  life,  nor  did  any  other  Tom-boy 
act  that  I  can  recall.  Indeed,  if  it  shall  ever 
be   written    of  me,   "  She    is   the   woman    who 


OF    PERSONAL   EXPERIENCE  21 

conquered  death  in  the  body  and  thereby  re- 
deemed the  race,"  my  biographer  will  have 
nothing  remarkable  to  record  of  my  youth.  I 
was  a  responsible  child,  and  was  much  trusted  by 
my  mother.  But  the  best  part  of  me  was  that 
I  had  no  appetite  for  what  is  called  the  truth. 
I  had  the  most  marvellous  imagination,  and 
could  not  be  impressed  for  any  length  of  time 
with  the  actual  condition  of  my  surroundings  ; 
but  lived  in  air  castles,  of  which  I  surely  was 
as  great  an  architect  as  ever  existed.  I  can 
recall  how,  when  my  mother  was  scolding  and 
threatening  me  with  severe  punishment,  and 
sometimes  administering  it,  I  would  be  adding 
to  the  last  chapter  of  some  wonderful  romance 
that  was  passing  through  my  mind,  so  utterly 
absorbed  in  my  thoughts  as  not  to  be  aware 
of  what  she  was  saying  or  doing. 

I  think  that  I  was  born  without  any  con- 
ception of  death,  though  the  thought  was 
engrafted  upon  my  thought  as  I  grew  up. 
But  this  was  because  I  was  not  old  enough  • 
neither  was  my  experience  ripe  enough,  to 
reason  upon  it.  I  did  reason  on  it  when  I 
became  older,  and  I  cast  the  belief  of  its  power 
entirely  out  of  my  mind. 

"  What  power  is  there  in  death,"  I  said, 
"  when    death   is    not  a   power   at  all,  but   the 


22  THE   STANDPOINT 

absence  of  all  power  ?     Life  is  power,  and  death 
is  nothing  but  a  contradiction  of  life." 

For  years  and  years  I  puzzled  my  brain 
over  this  thought.  I  read  the  Bible,  thinking  I 
should  find  in  it  the  sure  way.  I  did  not  find 
it,  for  it  is  not  there  ;  but  I  found  many  things 
that  illuminate  my  way  now,  though  they  did 
not  do  it  then.  .  I  had  to  ascend  to  a  higher  plane 
of  thought  than  I-  had  previously  attained,  in 
order  to  make  a  safe  application  of  the  things  I 
found  in  it. 

The  Old  Testament  interested  me  most,  and 
it  still  does  ;  for  truly  it  points  to  the  kind  of 
immortality  that  I  have  always  been  searching 
for — immortality  in  the  flesh.  In  the  meantime 
the  years  were  doing  their  worst  for  me.  I  was 
growing  old,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  I  cherished 
my  dream  of  ultimate  conquest  over  the  enemy 
that  had,  so  far,  submerged  the  entire  race. 

During  all  these  years  which  were  passing  so 
rapidly  my  ideas  were  dreamlike,  and  had  not 
yet  taken  the  form  of  an  absolute  determination 
to  conquer  death.  I  could  see  quite  clearly,  I 
thought,  that  the  people  were  going  on  to  the 
time  when  the)'  would  conquer  death,  but  I 
placed  this  time  far  away  off  in  the  future — 
not  knowing  that  the  hour  for  the  execution 
of  a  hope  comes  with  the  birth  of  the  hope. 


OF   PERSONAL   EXPERIENCE  23 

So  I  kept  reading  the  Bible  and  praying  to 
the  God  of  the  Scriptures  until  my  whole  life 
became  one  unbroken  aspiration  for  truth.  I 
had  been  a  church  member,  but  got  nothing 
from  this  experience  except  disappointment ; 
the  heaven  of  the  future  was  not  the  thing  I 
was  searching  for  ;  just  to  think  of  my  soul 
and  its  after-death  salvation  made  me  im- 
patient. "  Others,"  I  said,  "  may  comfort 
themselves  on  a  promise,  but  I  will  not  invest 
my  hope  in  that  which  requires  me  to  yield  up 
what  I  have,  and  desire  to  keep,  for  that  which, 
even  if  attained,  I  may  not  find  desirable ;  for 
how  could  any  reasoning  creature  really  desire 
the  heaven  depicted  by  the  orthodox  clergy  of 
fifty  years  ago? 

And  yet  I  was  in  the  dark  about  the  final 
outcome  of  my  ideas.  I  knew  nothing  of  how 
they  were  to  be  executed,  though  I  clung  to 
them  with  the  greatest  tenacity,  and  tried  many 
an  experiment  in  working  them  out. 

At  one  time  I  was  strong  in  the  belief  that 
the  favourite  disciple  of  Jesus  was  still  living  on 
the  earth  ;  some  words  that  Jesus  spoke  at  his 
last  meeting  with  John  the  Divine  induced  me 
to  believe  this,  and  I  built  up  a  theory  about  it 
that  would  read  like  a  romance  if  I  should  write 
it  out. 


24  THE   STANDPOINT 

My  husband  laughed  at  me  for  my  beliefs, 
though  I  only  told  him  a  very  few  of  them. 
I  had  no  idea  that  he  himself  had  imbibed 
them,  until  he  came  to  me  one  day  with  beam- 
ing eyes,  and  brought  a  paper  containing  a 
strange  theory  concerning  the  power  of  the 
race  to  overcome  death.  It  was  founded  on  the 
Bible  account  of  creation  ;  but,  beyond  show- 
ing me  that  there  were  others  besides  myself 
who  were  striving  for  the  conquest  of  death,  it 
did  me  no  good.  And  yet  it  did  me  good  in 
one  way  ;  the  circumstance  itself  revealed  the 
fact  that  my  husband  was  with  me  in  the 
thought,  though  he  had  never  admitted  it. 
This  strengthened  me,  and  we  got  in  the  habit 
of  discussing  the  matter  together. 

I  think  I  have  never  seen  any  one  who  dreaded 
death  so  much  as  he  did,  unless  it  was  the  little 
child  we  lost  when  she  was  only  nine  years  old, 
and  whose  terror  concerning  it  she  must  have 
inherited  from  her  father.  For  my  part,  I  did 
not  have  it  at  all.  I  have  never  met  any  one  so 
entirely  free  from  this  fear  as  I  have  always 
been  ;  but,  in  spite  of  this  absence  of  fear,  there 
is  no  one  living  more  determined  than  I  am  to 
overcome  death.  With  me  it  is  just  as  if  the 
life  principle  itself  kept  pouring  its  vitality  into 
me,  and  thus  asserting  itself  through  my  body, 


OF   PERSONAL   EXPERIENCE  25 

whether  I  cared  or  not.  And,  in  a  sense,  this 
was  the  case,  only  I  did  care ;  I  did  recognise 
it,  not  only  bodily,  but  in  a  dim  way  I  recog- 
nised it  intellectually  ;  and  my  salvation  lay  in 
this  fact.  At  least,  it  will  lie  in  this  fact  when 
I  am  saved  ;  and  it  would  be  difficult  to  con- 
vince me  that  I  am  not  being  saved  at  the 
present  time.  But  for  feeling  my  own  power 
in  the  matter  of  conquering  death,  I  would  not 
now  be  writing  this  book.  I  am  as  sure  that 
this  power  is  vested  in  my  brain  and  body  as 
I  can  ever  be  of  anything  in  the  world. 


CHAPTER   V 

THE   EFFORT   OF   JESUS   TO    OVERCOME   DEATH 

Ur  to  this  time — I  was  fifty  years  old,  or 
thereabouts — my  search  for  eternal  life  was  con- 
fined to  persons  and  things  outside  of  myself. 
I  was  constantly  looking  for  some  one  who 
knew  more  on  the  subject  than  I  did,  in  order 
that  I  might  hitch  myself  to  his  ideas  and  get 
a  free  ticket,  as  it  were,  into  the  promised  land. 
I  had  tried  religion  without  success,  and  had 
besought  the  help  of  God  until  I  grew  to  be 
ashamed  of  myself,  feeling  that  God  must  be 
too  tired  of  me  to  tolerate  my  petitions  any 
longer.  These  words  are  not  written  irrever- 
ently ;  they  are  absolutely  true.  We  judge 
others,  even  those  in  the  highest  places,  by 
ourselves,  and  I  knew  how  it  would  be  with 
me.  Certain  people  in  my  experience,  who 
had  been  dependent  on  me,  and  to  whose 
borrowing  and  begging  I  had  at  first  responded 
freely,  but  with  whom,  as  the  thing  continued, 
I  became  first  annoyed  and  then  disgusted, 
furnished  me  with  a  reason  for  believing  as 
I   did.     So    it    came   about  that    I    felt  a  little 

26 


EFFORT   OF   JESUS  TO   OVERCOME  DEATH         27 

bashful  in  approaching  the  "  Throne  of  Grace," 
and  I  finally  quit  it. 

But  before  I  quit  I  had  "  searched  the  Scrip- 
tures "  until  I  became  convinced  that  they  could 
do  nothing  for  me,  except  in  a  general  way. 
They  showed  me — so  I  believed — that  they 
were  the  compendium  of  the  best  thought 
furnished  by  the  world's  greatest  thinkers  of 
an  early  age,  on  the  very  subject  I  was  spend- 
ing my  life  investigating  ;  namely,  the  conquest 
of  death,  not  in  an  unknown  future  life,  but 
here  on  our  own  planet.  I  followed  this  idea 
through  the  various  books  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, and  saw  how,  by  slow  degrees,  the  feeling 
of  postponement  stole  in  upon  the  writers,  until 
at  last  they  concluded  that  they  could  not  save 
themselves,  but  that  sometime  in  the  future,  and 
as  the  result  of  a  certain  line  of  descent,  a  man 
would  be  born  with  power  to  conquer  death  for 
the  whole  race.  When  this  idea  became  fixed 
in  their  minds,  their  hopes  went  away  from 
themselves  and  centred  in  a  time  yet  to  come. 
This  state  of  thought — this  postponement  of 
effort — was  so  ruinous  that  the  lives  of  the 
people,  from  lasting  many  hundreds  of  years, 
dwindled  to  less  than  a  hundred.  The  reason 
of  this  will  be  explained  farther  on,  when  I 
show    the   importance   of  having  the  thoughts 


28  THE   EFFORT   OF  JESUS 

and  hopes  that  the  body  and  brain  generate 
express  themselves  in  and  through  the  body, 
instead  of  gadding  away  from  their  proper  seat 
of  action  and  leaving  the  body  to  starve.  It  is 
an  unknown  fact  at  this  time  that  thought  feeds 
the  body,  but  this  is  one  of  the  greatest  of  the 
new  truths  just  beginning  to  dawn  on  the  race. 

Recently,  as  it  seemed  to  me,  as  I  continued 
to  read  the  Bible,  the  first  idea  held  by  the 
old  thinkers,  the  idea  that  death  in  the  body 
could  be  conquered,  dwindled  out  completely  ; 
and  all  their  hopes  now  pointed  to  the  future 
coming  of  the  person  on  whom  their  salvation 
depended.  Then  Jesus  came,  and  though  his 
coming  was  not  in  the  line  of  descent  prophe- 
sied, this  line  being  on  Joseph's  side  and  Jesus 
being  the  child  of  Mary,  he  was  nevertheless 
accepted  by  enough  of  the  people  to  become 
a  great  character  of  history,  and  to  project  his 
influence  two  thousand  years  into  the  future. 

It  is  my  belief  that  Jesus  taught,  as  nearly 
as  he  dared,  the  conquest  of  death  in  the  body. 
He  realised  that  the  faith  of  the  old  prophets 
and  seers  had  departed,  and  he  knew  the 
savagery  of  the  people  too  well  to  try  to  change 
their  opinions  by  any  sudden  declaration  of 
his  belief.  And  yet  there  are  times  when  his 
belief  comes  out  in  his  sayings.     For  instance, 


TO   OVERCOME   DEATH  20. 

when  he  was  preaching  in  the  Temple  and  the 
Jews  said  to  him,  "  Our  fathers  taught  different 
from  this,"  Jesus  answered,  simply,  "  Your 
fathers  are  dead."  It  was  equivalent  to  saying, 
if  your  fathers  had  taught  what  I  teach,  they 
would  have  been  alive  to-day. 

The  account  of  the  life  of  Jesus  is  too  brief 
to  give  any  fixed  opinion  of  him  or  his  views. 
I  have  my  own  opinion,  which  I  shall  give. 
All  down  the  ages  there  have  been  men  who 
thought  themselves  favoured  of  God,  and  who 
believed  that  they  could  build  up  a  kingdom 
of  which  they  would  be  the  head.  Some  one 
has  written  a  book  called  "  The  Sixteen  Cruci- 
fied Saviours."  The  history  of  any  one  of  these 
would  stand  for  all  of  them.  They  were  all 
the  sons  of  virgins,  begotten  of  God  ;  and,  if 
I  am  not  mistaken,  every  one  of  them  was 
murdered  for  his  opinion's  sake.  An  account 
of  one  is  an  account  of  all,  which  is  a  fact 
to  shake  the  faith  of  every  person  who  prefers 
truth  to  fiction. 

Jesus  claimed  to  be  the  person  predicted  in 
the  Old  Testament,  of  whom  his  biographers 
made  such  clumsy  statements,  as  that  he  did 
thus  and  so  that  it  might  be  fulfilled  as 
predicted  in  the  Scriptures,  as  if  he  sought 
the  Scriptures  to  find  out  what  he  was  to  claim 


30  THE    EFFORT   OF   JESUS 

and  how  he  was  to  act.  Nevertheless,  though 
it  seems  a  contradiction,  he  had  a  certain 
amount  of  conviction  regarding  his  claim,  and 
the  conviction  grew  constantly  stronger  as  his 
power  to  speak  the  healing  word  that  cured 
the  people's  diseases  increased.  I  have  no 
doubt  he  became  a  marvel  to  himself,  and 
gradually  established  his  claims  in  his  own 
mind.  His  disciples  believed  in  him  in  pro- 
portion as  his  belief  in  himself  increased,  until 
the  full  force  of  the  entire  number  of  them 
became  an  almost  irresistible  power  among  the 
people. 

When  Jesus  began  to  see  unmistakably,  as 
he  thought,  that  he  could  overcome  death,  and 
when  threatened  and  evidently  in  great  danger, 
he  refused  to  make  an  effort  to  escape,  though 
he  might  easily  have  done  so.  When  his 
disciples,  who  knew  that  the  officers  were  after 
him,  urged  him  to  go  away  and  thus  avoid 
death,  he  said  something  like  this  to  them  : 
"  Oh  !  ye  of  little  faith  ;  knowest  thou  not  that 
my  Father  can  send  more  than  twelve  legions 
of  angels  and  take  me  from  the  cross  ?  " 

If  these  words  mean  anything,  they  mean 
that  Jesus  expected  that  which  would  justify 
his  faith  in  his  claims.  They  point  unmis- 
takably   to    the    fact     that     he    was    working 


TO   OVERCOME   DEATH  3 1 

a  grand  coup  de  main  that  would  establish 
him  at  once  and  forever,  in  his  own  and 
the  world's  belief,  that  he  was  the  Son  of 
God  and  had  a  right  to  stand  at  the  head  of 
all  men,  the  Saviour  and  King — the  crowned 
Prince  of  Peace. 

We  find  still  further  confirmation  of  this  in 
the  last  words  he  ever  spoke.  He  had  waited 
in  agony  for  hours,  and  the  help  he  expected 
had  not  come ;  life  was  ebbing  rapidly,  and 
the  end  had  almost  been  reached,  when  he 
cried  out,  "  My  God,  my  God,  why  hast  thou 
forsaken  me  ?  " 

It  seems  a  strange  thing  that  people  do  not 
see  the  truth  in  the  Bible  statement ;  but  the 
people  are  not  doing  their  own  thinking  to  any 
great  extent.  They  are  going  to  begin  to  do 
it  very  soon,  and  when  they  do,  we  shall  see 
and  know  and  do  things  that  are  now  con- 
sidered impossible. 


CHAPTER  VI 

HOW  I  TRIED  TO  BOLSTER  UP  MY  HOPE  BY 
SEARCHING  FOR  OTHERS  WHO  WOULD 
BELIEVE   IN    IT 

In  the  last  chapter  I  referred  to  the  fact  that 
in  my  search  for  an  escape  from  death,  I  kept 
constantly  looking  for  some  person  or  persons 
who  had  gone  farther  on  this  line  of  thought 
than  I  had  done,  and  who,  therefore,  knew 
more  about  it.  I  actually  unearthed  several 
fossils,  each  of  whom  had  some  idea  to  which 
he  was  married,  and  which  never  expanded 
beyond  its  then  shape  and  size.  One  woman 
whom  I  met  by  appointment,  after  several 
quite  sensible  letters  had  passed  between  us, 
actually  told  me  that  she  was  the  Virgin  Mary, 
resurrected  and  appointed  to  save  the  race. 
Several  experiences  of  this  kind  threw  me  back 
on  myself  for  personal  investigation.  No  one 
ever  called  me  a  fool,  even  though  I  made  no 
concealment  of  my  hopes.  I  talked  my  ideas 
to  my  neighbours,  and  made  many  converts 
among  them,  and  was  acknowledged  as  a  leader 
in    thought   as   far   as    I    was    known.      People 

32 


SEARCHING   FOR   OTHERS  33 

who  themselves  had  quietly  cherished  the  hope 
I  had  begun  to  exploit  abroad  came  long 
distances  to  see  me  and  hear  what  I  had  to 
say,  and  left  me  entirely  convinced  of  the 
possibility  of  the  thing,  though  I  frankly  ad- 
mitted that  I  did  not  know  how  it  was  to  be 
done.  I  always  declared  that  I  was  growing 
up  to  a  knowledge  of  it,  and  that  nothing  in 
life  could  stand  in  the  way  of  my  discovering  it. 

And  nothing  has  done  so  ;  and  I  have  dis- 
covered it. 

Year  after  year  slid  by,  and  found  me  always 
a  more  interested  searcher  than  before.  Year 
after  year  I  was  compelled  with  greater  force  to 
abandon  all  hope  of  help  from  other  people  ;  I 
was  being  turned  home  toward  myself,  and  at 
last  began  to  get  a  growing  conviction  of  the 
fact  that  there  was  no  help  for  me  but  in 
myself. 

What  a  revelation  this  would  have  been  had 
it  come  to  me  suddenly.  But  it  could  never 
have  come  in  this  way.  It  was  a  matter  of 
brain  development,  and  slow  development,  at 
that.  How  was  it  possible  for  a  woman  whose 
whole  life  had  been  enslaved  by  service  to 
others,  and  who  was  crushed,  as  such  women 
generally  are,  to  have  confidence  in  her  own 
ideas,  and  to  believe  in  herself  as  the  discoverer 
C 


34  SEARCHING   FOR   OTHERS 

of  a  truth  that  would  bring  salvation  ;  a  truth 
that  would  light  the  world  with  the  blessedness 
of  undying  hope  ?     It  was  not  in  me  to  think 
this,  or  even  to  accept  the  thought  when  others 
spoke  of  it  who  believed  in  me.     It  is  true  that 
— led  away  from  all  sense  of  personality  when 
fired  by  the  full  scope  of  the  idea — I  would  talk 
of  it  with  such  vitality  as  to  bring  conviction 
to  nearly  all  who  heard  me.     I  talked  with  great 
fervour  when  aroused,  but  when  alone,  and  the 
thought  came  to  me  that  I — poor  little  I — was 
really  and  truly  the  leader  in  so  tremendous  a 
thing  as  that  which  was  to   conquer  death   in 
the  bodies  of  the  people,  I  would  shrink  from 
it   and   reject    it ;   reject   the   glory   of  it,  even 
while  seeing  that   it  was  true,  and   that  every 
atom   of  my  body  and  brain  was  full   of  such 
confirmation  as   I  could  not  wholly  disbelieve. 
But,  though   I  could  not  disbelieve  it,  since 
it  was   born   in   me  like   the  lily  in    the   bulb, 
and    was     growing    out    of    me    just    as    the 
lily  grows  out   of  the  bulb,   I    yet   could    and 
did  ignore  the  sense  of  personality  that  would 
have  forced  the  conviction  of  ownership  upon 
me.      I    knew  that    an    understanding   of  how 
to  conquer  death  was    in    my   grasp,    and  was 
unfolding    more   and    more   to    my  perception, 
but,  while    I    cherished    this   great   fact,   I    yet 


WHO   WOULD   BELIEVE    IT  35 

kept  my  thought  from  dwelling  upon  its  great- 
ness ;  or  rather,  perhaps,  it  was  so  big  that 
my  unaccustomed  thought,  not  yet  free  from 
the  world's  old  beliefs  in  the  power  of  death, 
could  not  grasp  it. 

I  think  I  should  have  felt  more  com- 
fortable, in  the  circumstances,  if  some  other 
person  had  been  developing  the  idea,  and  I 
had  been  accepting  it  second-hand.  I  must 
say  of  myself  that  I  had  no  desire  to  become 
famous ;  there  were  certain  things  I  wanted 
to  do,  certain  problems  I  wanted  to  solve ; 
but  it  was  not  for  popular  applause  that  I 
was  working.  Indeed,  I  shrunk  from  notice, 
and,  unless  swept  to  the  front  by  the  force 
of  my  thought,  I  was  always  in  the  back- 
ground. As  a  child,  I  had  shunned  attention  ; 
I  was  usually  so  busy  carrying  out  my  own 
ideas,  or  thinking  my  own  thoughts,  that  I 
wished  to  be  left  alone.  I  am  this  way  even 
now ;  I  am  never  lonesome,  and  I  court 
solitude  ;  but  if  my  solitude  is  broken  in  upon 
by  pleasant  people,  I  enjoy  their  company  as 
much  as  any  one.  I  am  fond  of  people.  All 
expressions  of  life  are  engaging ;  but  man, 
who  stands  at  the  head  and  represents  the 
best  of  everything  below  him  —  what  shall  I 
say  of  him  ?     I  am  not  satisfied  to  say  simply 


36  SEARCHING    EOR   OTHERS 

that  I  love  him  ;  I  see  in  him  such  possibilities 
of  unfoldment  that  I  look  upon  him  as  the 
miracle  of  all  time  ;  and  he  excites  my  wonder 
and  stimulates  my  admiration  to  the  highest 
point  of  grandeur. 

With  this  feeling  about  others  (I  may  say 
all  others,  since  even  the  most  degraded  tramp 
contains  the  seed  of  immortal  growth)  it  is  no 
wonder  that  I  turned  my  thoughts  inward  upon 
myself,  and  began  to  admit  to  myself,  in  spite 
of  my  natural  timidity,  that  I,  too,  was  capable 
of  everything  that  my  mind  could  suggest  to 
me  as  possible  of  attaining. 

I  am  sure  that  no  one  will  look  upon  this 
as  egoism  or  vanity,  since  I  did  not  set  myself 
up  above  others  or  value  my  powers  above 
the  powers  of  others.  But  I  did  begin  to  value 
my  own  powers  in  proportion  as  I  discovered 
the  powers  of  others  ;  for  I  could  not  help 
seeing  that  the  race  is  a  unit,  and  that  the 
same  law  of  vital  force  runs  through  us  all, 
making  us  all  brothers.  And  gradually  I 
began  to  claim  my  own.  I  was  growing  into 
a  proper  sense  of  my  own  valuation.  I  was 
beginning  to  sec  such  strength  in  myself  that 
I  no  longer  desired  to  lean  on  another  ;  I  was 
approaching  a  position  of  individualism  ;  and 
I  say  now,  and  shall  prove  it  farther  on,  that 


WHO   WOULD   BELIEVE   IT  37 

strict  individualism  is  the  salvation  of  every 
member  of  the  race,  and  that  there  is  no 
salvation  outside  of  it.  It  is  individualism 
that  conquers  death. 

It  is  the  insanity  of  egoism  that  causes 
men  to  claim  that  they  are  the  specially 
endowed  messengers  of  God  to  a  dying  world. 
There  are  several  of  these  persons  who  are 
flourishing  in  a  small  way  at  this  time,  and 
making  a  good  living  out  of  their  dupes  ;  but 
their  influence  is  growing  more  and  more 
limited  as  the  process  of  individualisation  in 
the  people  goes  on.  I  can  readily  understand 
the  situation  ;  there  having  been  a  time  when 
I  myself  was  so  weak  in  self-confidence  that  I 
searched  for  a  leader ;  but  with  an  under- 
standing of  the  law,  the  preposterous  claims  of 
these  modern  Christs  became  at  once  apparent. 
There  are  others  who  are  yet  in  the  condition 
that  I  once  was  in  ;  they  are  filled  with  the 
desire  for  something  different  from  the  old-time 
ideas  about  salvation,  but  have  been  taught 
from  infancy  to  regard  themselves  as  "  creeping 
worms  of  the  dust,"  unworthy  of  even  decent 
treatment  from  the  hands  of  the  God  who  is 
supposed  to  have  created  them  ;  they  are 
weak  ;  they  must  lean  ;  and  the)'  lean  on  any 
inflated,  deluded,    and    deluding    creature    with 


38  SEARCHING    FOR   OTHERS 

sufficient  egoism  to  publish  his  claims  to  the 
world.  And  so  our  modern  messiahs  make 
their  appearance  and  flourish  for  a  time  before 
their  course  ends  in  such  characters  as  Weary 
Walker  and  Dusty  Rhoades. 

My  mind  being  filled  with  thoughts  relating 
to  the  subject  of  conquering  death,  I  soon — 
without  an  effort — tested  public  opinion  of  a 
highly  cultured  order  on  the  subject.  I  had 
left  California  by  this  time,  and  was  living  in 
Chicago  and  doing  editorial  work  on  a  paper 
there.  Of  course,  I  found  many  acquaintances 
of  a  very  superior  degree  of  mental  ability,  and 
we  discussed  all  the  leading  ideas  of  the  day. 
My  opinions  on  every  subject  except  that  of 
the  conquest  of  death  were  kindly  accepted  by 
my  friends,  but  they  rejected  the  idea  that 
eternal  life  could  be  achieved  in  this  world,  and 
especially  at  this  time.  Some  of  them  were 
willing  to  accept  the  theory  if  its  fulfilment 
could  be  put  off  a  few  hundred  or  thousand 
years,  but  none  of  them  could  be  induced  to 
consider  the  possibility  of  it  in  the  present 
generation.  These  were  educated  people  ;  they 
were  college-bred  men,  and  their  minds  were 
stuffed  full  of  what  the  world  calls  learning ; 
and  "learning"  is  the  fit  name  for  it — it  is  far 
from  being  wisdom. 


WHO   WOULD   BELIEVE    IT  39 

It  was  here  that  I  saw  the  difference  between 
the  natural  mind  and  the  mind  that  had  been 
thrown  out  of  its  natural  direction  by  filling  it 
with  what  is  called  learning.  In  my  previous 
association  with  the  people  of  the  little  place 
where  I  lived,  I  found  many  original  thinkers 
and  reasoners  ;  minds  that  were  not  over- 
crowded with  the  rubbish  of  dead  centuries, 
but  fresh  and  vital  and  able  to  do  original 
thinking.  These  were  the  minds  I  impressed 
with  my  ideas  ;  and  when  I  contrasted  the 
two  different  casts  of  mind  as  I  have  described 
them,  I  valued  book  learning  less  than  ever.  I 
had  never  valued  it  very  highly.  I  wanted  to 
delve  down  in  the  ground  ;  I  wanted  to  get  to 
the  root  of  things  and  discover  the  cause  of 
growth.  I  knew  that  I  must  find  the  law  of 
growth  or  I  would  never  conquer  death. 

I  have  found  it,  and  I  shall  make  the  whole 
thing  so  clear  in  these  pages  that  a  child  can 
understand  it. 

In  regard  to  what  I  said  about  the  indiffer- 
ence of  my  book-learned  friends  to  my  ideas 
concerning  the  conquest  of  death,  I  must  refer 
to  an  experience  that  seems  strange.  It  only 
required  a  slight  acquaintance  with  a  man  or 
woman  to  find  out  just  what  reach  of  mind  he 
or  she  possessed.     In  most  people  I  soon  came 


40  SEARCHING    FOR   OTHERS 

to  a  mental  dead  wall  beyond  which  I  could 
not  go,  and  beyond  which  there  would  have 
been  no  use  of  going,  because  there  was  nothing 
there.  Those  persons  carried  within  themselves 
the  stamp  of  death  ;  they  had  not  advanced 
far  enough  in  ideal  lines  of  thought  to  release 
the  dead  weight  of  the  old. 

But  there  were  other  minds  into  which  I 
could  look  down  and  down  the  perfectly  clear 
depths,  and  find  no  obstacle  to  the  upward 
moving  current  of  life,  which  has  its  rise  in  the 
beginning  of  the  person's  individuality.  These 
persons  never  rejected  a  thought  because  it  was 
new  ;  they  were  always  ready  to  consider  it, 
and  accept  it  if  their  reason  confirmed  it. 

From  the  intellectual  capacity  of  some,  when 
contrasted  with  this  quality  of  luminosity  of 
others,  I  perceived  that  a  portion  of  the  race 
had  progressed  far  enough  to  throw  off  the 
incubus  of  disease  and  death,  as  soon  as  more 
knowledge  should  be  evolved  on  the  subject 
and  that  another  portion  of  it  had  not. 


CHAPTER   VII 

THE     GROWTH     OF     PUBLIC     OPINION     IN     THE 
DIRECTION   OK   THE   CONQUEST   OF   DEATH 

It  was  nearly  twenty  years  ago  that  I  severed 
my  connection  with  the  paper  that  I  was  then 
on  and  with  the  friends  I  made  while  there, 
and  I  have  often  wondered  if  these  friends 
have  relaxed  their  opposition  to  what  they 
called  my  pet  hobby.  I  doubt  not  that  many 
of  them  have.  The  idea  is  no  longer  regarded 
as  absurd  ;  it  has  become  one  of  intense  interest 
to  millions  of  people.  The  interest  in  every- 
thing written  on  the  subject  is  so  great  that  it 
threatens  to  become  a  mania.  Every  city  in 
America  has  its  Century  Clubs,  and  its  Live-For- 
ever Clubs,  and  they  have  spread  to  the  country, 
and  the  villages  are  discussing  them.  The  books 
that  have  been  written  on  this  subject,  and  almost 
forgotten,  have  been  revived,  and  new  editions 
of  them  are  on  the  shelves  of  the  bookstores. 

There  is  the  beginning  of  a  groundswell   of 

inquiry    on    the    subject  ;    th>    whole    thinking 

public   is  slowly  awakening  ;  and   as  it  does  it 

draws    its   hopes    from    the   distant   heaven    of 

41 


42  THE   GROWTH   OF 

delusive  promise  to  the  prospect  of  present 
salvation.  Who  does  not  know  that  "  a  bird 
in  the  hand  is  worth  two  in  the  bush  "  ?  and 
who  is  going  to  walk  in  the  dark  when  once  he 
has  glimpsed  the  rising  sun  ? 

Introspection  is  a  neglected  art.  If  man 
would  look  within  himself  in  his  search  for 
truth,  he  would  gain  more  useful  knowledge 
than  all  the  colleges  and  all  his  travels  through 
foreign  countries  could  give  him. 

Nay,  more  ;  the  man  who  goes  outside  of 
himself  in  his  effort  to  gain  wisdom  bankrupts 
himself ;  and  the  knowledge  he  acquires  may 
delude,  instead  of  leading  him  in  the  direction 
of  highest  truth.  Nothing  can  possibly  lead 
any  man  to  a  higher  growth  but  the  under- 
standing of  himself. 

What  is  the  most  important  thing  man  can 
possess?  I  answer,  it  is  himself.  And  when  I 
say  himself,  I  mean  his  body,  and  not  his  soul. 
Men  have  been  soul-saving  for  thousands  of 
years,  and  all  that  time  the  body  has  been  dying 
of  neglect. 

Is  the  body  of  no  importance,  that  we  can 
afford  to  ignore  it  in  this  way?  Is  it  true  that 
the  soul  can  exist  without  the  body  ?  Who 
really  knows  anything  about  the  soul  ?  And 
who     does     not    know    something    about    the 


PUBLIC   OPINION  43 

body  ?  We,  at  least,  know  from  observation 
and  practical  tests  that  the  body  exists,  and 
that  it  is  a  very  convenient  thing  to  have ; 
we  know  that  it  is  a  machine  or  a  combination 
of  machines  through  which  we  transact  all  the 
business  connected  with  life,  and  without  which 
we  would  have  no  life  on  the  terrestrial  plane 
where  we  execute  all  the  desires  that  make  life 
worth  living. 

That  we  know  almost  nothing  of  ourselves, 
our  resources  and  undeveloped  powers,  is  because 
for  thousands  of  years  we  have  devoted  our 
time  and  talent  to  exploring  the  soul — or  some 
imaginary  thing  we  call  the  soul — to  the  utter 
neglect  of  the  bod)',  which  there  is  no  doubt 
about  our  possessing.  Owing  to  this  blunder 
we  know  almost  nothing  about  our  bodies, 
and  absolutely  nothing  of  our  souls,  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  we  have  claimed  to  know  so 
much  about  them  for  so  long  a  time. 

The  soul  —  admitting  its  existence,  which  I 
am  more  than  willing  to  do — is  a  secondary 
matter  on  our  present  plane  of  life  ;  we  are  in 
a  world  where  bodies,  and  not  souls,  do  the  work 
which  is  necessary  to  be  done,  in  order  that 
our  lives  be  protracted  in  the  fulfilment  of  those 
desires  which  belong  to  the  body,  and  which 
are  essential  to  its  existence  here. 


44  THE   GROWTH   OF 

We  run  this  wonderful  engine,  the  body,  in  a 
way  that  would  shame  a  ship's  captain  in  the 
command  of  his  boat.  The  captain  would  want 
some  knowledge  of  his  vessel  in  order  that 
he  might  control  her  properly  and  keep  her 
from  drifting  at  the  mercy  of  wind  and  tide  ; 
but  man  —  who  owns  the  greatest  piece  of 
mechanism  in  the  world,  a  piece  of  mechan- 
ism that  combines  within  itself  every  law  of 
mechanics  known  and  unknown  —  makes  no 
effort  to  understand  it,  and  has  no  conception 
of  the  hundredth  part  of  its  meaning,  or  of 
the  thousandth  part  of  its  worth  to  himself. 

What  it  is  that  lies  behind  this  mechanism, 
no  one  knows.  What  the  "  I  "  that  is  always 
speaking  for  itself  may  be,  is  a  secret.  Whether 
this  "I,"  which  says,  "  My  body,"  is  really  the 
body's  very  self,  or  some  unseen  thing  hidden 
in  the  body  or  behind  the  body,  no  one  can 
tell.  The  assertion  "  I  "  stands  for  the  man, 
and  the  "  I  "  not  only  says,  "  My  body,"  but 
it  says,  "  My  soul,"  also.  Is  the  "  I  "  one  with 
the  soul  or  one  with  the  body?  Or  is  it  the 
intelligent  union  of  both  ? 

For  my  part,  I  believe  that  the  "  I  "  is  all 
the  soul  a  man  has,  and  that  it  is  the  sum- 
total  of  the  body's  entire  life  ;  its  memory,  in 
fact ;  its  record  of  all  the  bodv's  transactions, 


PUBLIC   OPINION  45 

and  that  it  is  one  with  the  body,  the  body 
being  the  external  expression  of  it.  The  "  I  " 
records  all  the  experiences  through  which  a 
man  passes  ;  and  if  it  takes  note  of  these  ex- 
periences and  reasons  on  them,  it  becomes  wiser 
every  day.  That  the  "  I  "  says,  "  My  body,"  is 
only  a  habit  of  speech,  and  does  not  prove  that 
the  body  is  one  thing  and  the  "  I  "  another. 

It  is  because  I  perceive  the  truth  of  the 
above  statement  that  I  have  grown  into  a 
conviction  of  the  immense  importance  of  the 
body.  The  body  is  the  man,  and  the  man 
is  adapted  to  the  place  he  occupies  now  ;  his 
body  correlates  the  needs  of  his  life  here,  and 
this  fact  leaves  the  soul  out  of  this  treatise.  If 
the  soul  is  needed  in  another  world,  we  will 
find  it  there. 

What  is  the  greatest  desire  of  the  human 
being?  Let  us  be  honest  with  ourselves.  It  is 
not  for  the  salvation  of  his  soul.  We  desire  the 
salvation  of  our  souls  if  it  proves  impossible  to 
save  our  bodies  ;  but  first  of  all  we  want  our 
bodies  saved.  The  most  delightful  heaven  the 
imagination  of  genius  has  devised  does  not 
allure  us  so  much  as  the  remnant  of  this  bodily 
life  with  all  its  trials  and  sufferings. 

"  All  that  a  man  hath  will  he  give  for  his 
life."     It   has   always   been    so,    and    with    the 


46  THE   GROWTH    OF 

growing  refinement  of  the  race  it  becomes 
more  so.  In  the  early  history  of  the  race  men 
yielded  their  lives  far  more  readily  than  they 
do  at  this  time.  Would  a  man  of  the  present 
age  die  for  opinion's  sake,  as  the  heroes  of  old 
once  did  ?  No,  he  would  deny  everything  in 
order  to  save  his  life,  wisely  thinking  that  life 
was  far  more  valuable  than  opinion,  as,  indeed, 
it  is. 

Life  is  above  all  things ;  life  right  here, 
handicapped  by  our  environments,  and  blurred 
in  every  conceivable  way  by  our  ignorance, 
is  still  more  valuable  than  all  else. 

In  spite  of  the  body's  disabilities,  and  the 
pain  that  racks  it,  and  the  penury  that  starves 
it,  we  yet  value  it  so  much  more  than  the 
prospective  heaven  of  the  future,  that  we  will 
not  end  it  voluntarily,  though  we  might  do  so 
at  the  cost  of  a  meal,  and  with  less  pain  than 
an  ordinary  spell  of  indigestion.  Does  this 
mean  nothing?  Do  not  all  things  mean  some- 
thing? I  assert  that  the  simple  facts  I  am 
stating  will  prove  to  be  the  most  important 
truths  of  which  the  mind  can  get  any  concep- 
tion, when  once  understood. 

The  inherent  force  and  determination  which 
always  point  in  one  direction,  which  begin  in 
the  elementary  life-cells  themselves  and  increase 


PUBLIC   OPINION  47 

with  every  step  upward  in  race  growth,  have 
a  meaning  that  no  power  of  imagination  can 
ever  extend  to  its  legitimate  limits,  for,  indeed, 
it  has  no  limits. 

This  force  and  this  determination  are  ex- 
pressed in  the  love  of  life  in  the  body,  and 
the  avoidance  of  the  body's  death.  They  are 
manifested  in  every  object  in  all  the  world. 
They  manifest  in  the  lowest  forms  no  less 
than  in  the  highest,  as  all  persons  must  have 
observed  many  times.  Turn  over  the  half 
decayed  piece  of  wood,  and  see  with  what 
hurrying  fear  the  little  creatures  under  it  rush 
to  safe  places  out  of  our  sight.  And  the 
vegetables  and  trees  also ;  note  with  what 
tenacity  of  life  they  mend  their  broken  limbs, 
and  go  on  growing  in  spite  of  the  most  adverse 
conditions.  Even  the  crystals  and  rocks  strive 
to  assume  shapes  and  enter  into  conditions  of 
greater  permanency. 

It  is  the  love  of  life — not  of  soul  life,  but 
of  body  life — and  the  hope  of  prolonging  it 
that  makes  cowards  of  us  all  ;  in  fact,  it  is 
the  love  of  life  that  prompts  every  action  we 
ever  will  or  can  make.  No  principle  within 
us  is  so  strong  as  this.  "  All  that  a  man  hath 
will  he  give  for  his  life." 

Looking   through    nature    everywhere    it    is 


48  THE   GROWTH    OF 

the  same ;  the  one  great  desire,  first  of  all, 
is  for  life  ;  after  that  come  the  minor  desires. 
Often  when  it  is  necessary  to  kill  something, 
my  sympathy  is  so  drawn  into  the  effort  of 
the  creature  to  save  its  own  life,  that  I  become 
weak  and  faint  and  seem  to  partially  die  with 
it.  At  least,  there  is  an  approximation  in  my 
feelings  toward  this  extreme  point,  and  it  shows 
how  high  my  valuation  of  life  is. 

Down  through  the  ages  all  men  have  accepted 
— apparently  without  thought — the  belief  that 
death  was  an  unavoidable  thing ;  they  have 
accepted  this  belief  in  spite  of  their  desire  to 
live.  I  say  all  men  ;  yet,  as  I  have  pointed 
out,  there  have  been  exceptions,  the  writers 
of  the  Old  Testament  having  unquestionably 
had  faith  in  the  power  of  the  body  to  conquer 
death  sometime  in  the  future,  if  not  in  their 
time. 

The  two  facts — the  desire  to  live,  and  the 
belief  of  the  people  that  it  is  impossible  to 
prolong  life  eternally  in  the  body  under  pre- 
sent conditions — are  at  the  foundation  of  all 
religions.  P2very  creed  in  the  world  has  been 
projected  by  the  human  brain,  because,  first, 
the  desire  to  protract  life  was  an  unconquer- 
able thing  ;  and,  secondly,  because  it  did  not 
appear  possible  to  attain   it  here. 


PUBLIC   OPINION  49 

Suppose  that  men  had  seen  the  possibility 
of  overcoming  death  here,  and  had  gone  to 
work  to  realise  that  possibility,  would  they 
have  projected  a  place  of  future  abode  for 
themselves  after  this  life  was  over  ?  It  would 
never  have  been  over ;  then  what  need  would 
they  have  had  for  a  creed  to  save  them  in 
a  hereafter?  They  would  have  laboured  to 
strengthen  themselves  in  the  present ;  to  fortify 
and  improve  their  external  conditions,  and  to 
improve  and  develop  the  mighty  tool  for  doing 
this ;  the  only  tool  any  man  ever  owned  or 
ever  will  own — his  body. 

I  have  said  that  as  the  race  refined  death 
became  a  greater  terror  to  it ;  this  is  because 
man's  increased  knowledge  of  the  body  has 
rendered  the  body  more  sacred  to  him.  He 
begins  to  perceive  not  only  the  uses  of  the 
body,  but  the  beauty  of  it,  and  the  happiness 
to  be  gotten  through  it,  and  his  valuation  of 
it  increases  with  his  knowledge  of  what  it  is 
worth  to  him  ;  of  not  only  what  it  is  worth 
now,  but  of  what  it  would  be  worth  under 
more  favourable  circumstances.  His  hopes  are 
for  his  body ;  his  desires  are  centred  upon 
its  perpetuation.  In  proportion  as  his  respect 
for  his  body  increases,  and  his  desire  for  the 
perpetuation  of  life  in  this  world  keeps  growing, 
D 


50  THE    GROWTH    OF 

his  concern  for  his  soul  and  for  the  heaven  of 
the  future  decreases. 

It  is  this  direction  of  growth  in  the  race,  all 
pointing  to  farther  development  here  and  now, 
that  is  causing  the  churches  to  go  empty  on 
Sundays  ;  it  is  at  the  bottom  of  the  complaints 
that  the  clergy  are  making,  though  they  are  not 
aware  of  it.  The  preachers  are  searching  in  a 
hundred  different  directions  for  the  reason  of 
the  decline  of  religious  influence,  and  because 
they  have  not  yet  looked  in  the  right  direction 
they  have  failed  to  find  the  cause.  At  a  recent 
meeting  in  Brooklyn  where  man)-  of  the  leading 
ministers  of  the  country  were  in  council,  there 
were  those  among  them  who  actually  said  that 
the  indifference  to  Sunday  service  was  the 
absence  of  fear  of  the  devil  and  hell,  which 
had  become  almost  obliterated  from  the  public 
mind  ;  and  they  advised  taking  up  this  old 
piece  of  idiocy,  and  again  working  it  in  order 
to  get  their  churches  filled.  It  also  came  out 
at  this  council  that  there  were  nearly  five 
thousand  Congregational  preachers  who  were 
without  charges. 

These  facts  are  stated  here  in  order  to 
strengthen  my  argument  concerning  the  growth 
in  the  race  in  its  valuation  of  life  in  the  body, 
and  of  its  increasing  indifference  to  the  promises 


PUBLIC   OPINION  5  I 

of  a  future  heaven.  The  race  is  becoming  more 
practical  every  day.  It  really  does  not  know 
why  it  is  neglecting  the  religious  services  upon 
which  it  was  wont  to  give  such  regular  attend- 
ance ;  it  only  knows  that  the  Sunday  sermon 
does  not  interest  it  as  the  Sunday  papers  do  ; 
and  as  the  growing  intelligence  of  the  age  has 
— unconsciously  to  itself — dulled  its  fear  of  the 
devil,  it  is  not  afraid  to  do  what  its  inclination 
leads  it  to  do. 

Loss  of  interest  in  the  next  world,  which  has 
come  from  an  increased  interest  in  this  world, 
is  responsible  for  all  the  complaints  the  ministers 
are  making  about  the  falling  off  of  church  in- 
fluence. Concentration  is  killing  theology  ;  it 
is  drawing  the  powers  of  the  intellect  to  the 
work  of  the  present  hour  ;  it  is  bringing  the 
scattered  forces  and  the  far  roaming  hopes 
home,  and  centring  them  upon  what  there  is 
to  do  here  in  this  world,  and  now.  The 
visionary  is  doomed  ;  the  practical  has  arrived. 


CHAPTER   VIII 

EVERY    HOPE    IS   THE   SURE    PROPHECY   OF 
ITS   OWN    FULFILMENT 

In  looking  back  I  now  sec  that  a  belief  in  death 
as  a  fixed  and  unalterable  fact  never  had  full 
possession  of  me.  I  doubt  whether  in  a  true 
sense  it  really  has  full  possession  of  anyone  ; 
for,  while  it  seems  real  enough  so  far  as  the 
dying  of  other  people  is  concerned,  we  rarely 
think  of  it  as  being  an  inevitable  reality  to 
ourselves.  It  always  seems  a  far-off  and 
shadowy  possibility,  but  not  an  irresistible 
fate,  such  as  a  man  feels  it  to  be  who  is 
under  sentence  of  death  for  some  crime. 

And  yet  reason,  so  far  as  our  reason  is  based 
on  observation,  tells  us  that  death  is  as  certain 
to  come  to  us  as  to  the  condemned  felon  in  his 
cell.  And  why  are  we  so  little  disturbed  by  it? 
Is  it  because  we  anticipate  life  beyond  the 
grave?  The  felon  also  anticipates  this;  and 
moreover  his  expectations  for  happiness  in 
another  world  are  usually  as  bright  to  his 
imagination  as  ours  can  be.  Then  why  does  he 
dread  death  while  we   do    not?     It  is  because 

52 


THE    FULFILMENT   OF   HOPE  53 

he  realises  that  to  him  it  is  inevitable,  while 
we  can  never  quite  bring  ourselves  to  do  so. 

Our  reason,  based  on  observation,  admits 
that  it  is  inevitable.  No  person  has  ever 
escaped  death  yet ;  but  in  spite  of  this  fact 
there  is  some  hidden  impulse  within  us  that 
denies  the  inevitableness  of  it.  And  this 
hidden  impulse  betrays  the  presence,  deep 
down  at  the  very  foundation  of  individual 
existence,  of  some  unseen  spring  of  ever- 
present  vitality,  the  discovery  of  which  will 
overcome  death.  We  feel  it  though  we  do 
not  see  it ;  we  know  it  to  be  true  though  as 
yet  it  has  never  been  proved  ;  and  there  is  an 
undefined  something  in  man  that  exists  more 
by  feeling  than  by  seeing,  and  so  death  is 
inwardly  rejected,  while  verbally  accepted. 

If  man  accepted  the  belief  of  death  in  even- 
part  of  his  consciousness,  in  his  inner  as  well  as 
his  outer  self,  he  would  feel  about  it  very  much 
as  the  condemned  felon  does.  It  would  occupy 
his  every  thought  and  render  him  unfit  for  any 
effort  in  life,  except  a  preparation  for  death. 
In  short,  the  certain  knowledge  of  coming 
death  would  be  equivalent  to  present  death, 
so  far  as  the  uses  of  life  are  concerned. 

But  men  are  not  expecting  to  die ;  their 
lives  prove  it ;  they  are  intensely  interested  in 


54  HOPE   THE    PR(  IPHECY 

a  thousand  schemes  of  activity  on  the  earth 
plane  ;  and  they  find  their  greatest  happiness 
in  bettering  their  conditions  and  in  surrounding 
themselves  with  objects  that  are  beautiful  and 
pleasing.  And  these  objects  do  surely  give 
them  happiness,  which,  even  though  it  may 
be  fleeting,  stimulates  them  to  greater  efforts 
in  the  same  direction,  and  ends  in  the  further 
accumulation  of  treasures  such  as  the  clergy 
caution  us  against,  and  which  certainly  are  not 
those  we  are  requested  to  lay  up  in  heaven. 
Everywhere  and  all  the  time  in  these  latter 
years  men  are  living  more  and  more  in  the 
present ;  and  the  wisdom  of  this  has  already 
borne  results  in  the  increase  in  the  average 
length  of  human  life,  which  is  becoming  greater 
every  year. 

"  Death  is  inevitable."  Men  almost  univer- 
sally say  this  ;  but  their  words  do  not  touch 
their  own  convictions  ;  they  do  not  excite  any 
emotion  within  them.  It  is  only  when  they  feel 
its  icy  touch  that  they  begin  to  have  even  the 
slightest  realisation  of  it  as  applicable  to  their 
own  cases.  As  soon  as  they  begin  to  feel  that 
death  is  impending,  their  fears  are  aroused  and 
they  seek  to  escape  from  it. 

That  they  do  fear  it  and  seek  to  escape  from 
it   is   proof  conclusive  that   there  is  a  way   of 


OF   ITS   OWN    FULFILMENT  55 

escape.  There  is  no  truth  in  the  cosmic  growth 
of  the  race  more  true  than  that  every  hope  is  the 
sure  prophecy  of  its  own  fulfilment. 

No  matter  whether  we  take  the  evolutionary 
view,  that  man  created  himself,  or  the  Scriptural 
view,  that  he  was  created  by  a  personal  God, 
the  very  fact  that  his  hope  stretches  forward 
into  the  future  is  absolute  assurance  that  the 
future  exists,  and  that  it  exists  for  the  purpose 
of  fulfilling  man's  desires.  This  thought  came 
to  me  before  I  had  the  intellectual  grasp  to 
follow  it  out  in  all  its  details,  and  thereby  to 
prove  it  conclusively  to  myself.  But  I  never 
ceased  to  believe  and  to  trust  it  with  all  the 
force  of  my  nature ;  and  it  was  my  solace  in 
hours  that  were  dark  as  midnight.  I  accepted 
it  as  truth,  never  for  a  moment  clouding  it  with 
doubt,  even  before  I  had  followed  it  out  to  the 
absolute  knowing.  I  felt  that  it  was  invulner- 
able, long  before  I  found  out  why  it  was  so  ; 
long  before  my  reasoning  faculties  were  suffi- 
ciently awakened  to  understand  it  fully.  There 
was  the  statement  just  as  I  have  made  it. 
Every  hope  is  the  prophecy  of  its  sure  fulfil- 
ment— a  mighty  and  incontrovertible  truth,  that 
became  a  part  of  my  brain  structure  and  eventu- 
ally worked  its  way  to  externals,  and  left  its 
impress  upon  every  atom  of  my  body.     It  took 


56  HOPE   THE    PROniECV 

the  form  of  a  fixed  principle  that  each  succeed- 
ing experience  confirmed,  until  I  began  to  feel 
the  power  of  a  conqueror,  and  was  lifted  from 
a  position  of  pitiful  weakness  and  self-distrust 
to  one  of  unswerving  strength.  In  this  posi- 
tion fresh  vitality  was  generated  by  my  body, 
which  poured  its  power  into  my  heretofore 
sluggish  brain,  until  by  slow  degrees  the  whole 
problem  of  growth  was  unfolded. 

There  is  many  another  expression  that  helps 
to  unfold  the  problem  of  growth  or  life,  but 
not  one  of  them  struck  me  with  such  force  as 
this.  Every  hope  is  the  sure  prophecy  of  its 
own  fulfilment. 

And  why  ?  Because  hope  is  related  to  the 
thing  hoped  for ;  this  being  so,  it  is  inseparable 
from  it.  Suppose  that  there  is  a  God  that 
made  us,  and  that  He  is  great  and  wise  and 
above  all  things  good  and  true,  then  how  would 
it  be  possible  for  Him — our  Father — to  plant 
a  lie  deep  down  in  the  first  impulse  of  our 
individual  lives,  that  would  prove  a  most  de- 
ceptive allurement,  holding  out  promises  that 
He  never  intended  should  be  realised  ?  Could 
anyone  believe  in  God  and  accept  this  fact? 

But  suppose  we  reject  the  belief  in  special 
creation,  and  dwell  for  a  moment  upon  the 
theory  of  evolution  ;  there  will  be  no  difference 


OF   ITS   OWN    FULFILMENT  S7 

in  results.  If  the  life-cell,  or  the  first  principle 
of  individualised  life,  whatever  it  may  be, 
contains  the  essence  that  later,  under  higher 
development,  expands  into  this  hope,  then  the 
hope  points  to  the  time  of  realisation  and  to 
the  conditions  that  will  render  realisation  pos- 
sible, as  surely  as  the  grain  of  wheat  planted 
in  the  ground  will  germinate  and  unfold  itself 
until  the  full  prophecy  of  its  being  is  fulfilled. 

Hope,  which  is  an  expression  of  the  law  of 
growth  in  a  man,  cannot  possibly  point  to  that 
which  does  not  exist.  It  always  streams  forth 
in  the  direction  of  the  object  which  is  correlated 
to  it ;  of  the  object  which  is  its  complement, 
and  the  acquisition  of  which  fixes  it  in  living 
substance  as  a  new  creation. 

The  idea  that  projects  life  beyond  the  grave 
does  not  fully  allay  the  fear  of  death  ;  nor 
does  the  promise  of  heaven,  with  all  its  attrac- 
tions, reconcile  us  to  it.  So  long  as  even  a 
modicum  of  the  old  vitality  lasts,  we  prefer  this 
troublesome  and  poverty-stricken  world  to  the 
"spheres  of  the  blest."  It  is  only  when  the 
vitality  is  too  low  to  permit  further  resistance 
to  death  that  men,  as  a  rule,  become  reconciled 
to  go.  To  be  sure,  there  are  abnormal  instances 
where  men's  imaginations  have  been  so  stimu- 
lated   by   descriptions    of  the   world    to   come, 


58  HOPE   THE    PROPHECY 

that  the\r  have  let  go  the  hold  they  had  upon 
this  one,  and  have  seemed  anxious  to  go.  But 
we  all  admit  that  men,  in  such  conditions,  are 
unbalanced. 

We  do  not  want  to  die — this  is  the  plain 
fact.  We  do  not  want  to  die,  no  matter  how 
hard  life  seems,  or  how  enchanting  the  future 
is  painted  for  us.  We  not  only  do  not  want 
to  die,  but  we  do  not  expect  it.  Death  always 
comes  upon  us  as  a  surprise. 

The  race  believes  that  it  believes  that  an 
implacable  and  inexorable  God  has  passed 
sentence  of  death  upon  it ;  it  also  claims  to 
justify  God  in  having  done  so  ;  but  its  position 
is  self-deceptive,  and  its  actions  contradict  its 
assumed  belief  in  God's  power  and  wisdom. 
It  is  constantly  seeking  remedies  by  which  it 
can  thwart  God's  purpose  in  killing  it ;  and, 
deep  down  in  the  soul  of  it,  it  rests  more  hope 
in  the  power  of  a  pill  than  in  the  power  of  God. 

It  has  its  body  tinker  and  its  soul  tinker; 
and  it  clings  to  its  body  tinker  until  hope 
deserts  it,  and  then,  in  despair,  it  turns  to  its 
soul  tinker.  And  when  a  loved  one  has 
passed  through  the  veil  and  from  out  our 
sight,  though  we  say,  "He  is  happy  now; 
he  is  in  the  bosom  of  God,  and  sorrow,  sick- 
ness and   death  shall  touch  him  no  more,"  we 


OF   ITS   OWN    FULFILMENT  59 

weep  and  refuse  to  be  comforted.  And  I  say 
that  it  is  not  the  mere  pain  of  separation  that 
wrings  our  hearts,  for  he  might  have  gone  to 
another  country,  or  even  to  another  planet, 
and  if  he  had  gone  alive,  we  would  not  have 
felt  as  we  do. 

And  this  feeling  we  have  for  him — what  is 
it;  and  why  is  it  what  it  is? 

Now,  listen  :  It  is  the  intuitive  perception 
of  a  truth  that  has  not  yet  been  made  apparent 
to  our  reasoning  faculties.  It  is  because  death 
is  a  violation  of  some  natural  principle,  with 
which  we  are  not  yet  acquainted.  And,  be- 
cause it  is  a  violation  of  some  natural  principle, 
some  innate  possibility  of  infinite  value,  hidden 
at  present  from  our  dwarfed  perceptions,  we 
are  rent  asunder  by  it,  and  cannot  reconcile 
it  with  our  long  accepted  belief  that  death  is 
a  blessing  in  disguise.  It  is  human  nature 
overturning  human  religion. 

It  seems  to  me,  judging  by  my  own  feelings, 
that  if  man  actually  knew  that  death  was  to  be 
his  doom,  from  which  there  was  no  possibility 
of  escape,  he  would  so  dread  the  event  as  to 
make  life  one  protracted  horror,  and  would 
be  prompted  to  hasten  the  thing  in  order  to 
relieve  himself  from  the  thought  of  it ;  just  as 
men  condemned  to  hang  will  hang  themselves 


60  IIOrE    THE    PROrilECY 

iii  their  cells  to  get  the  fearful  catastrophe  off 
their  minds. 

The  fact  is,  men  do  not  anticipate  death 
for  themselves,  whatever  they  may  do  for 
others.  Undefined  in  their  own  minds,  there 
remains  fixed  forever  that  intuitive  perception 
of  immortality,  which  belongs  to  the  unchang- 
ing and  undying  life-principle  of  which  they 
are  the  expression,  or  the  visible  manifestation. 

Undefined  by  themselves,  I  say  ;  so  undefined 
is  it,  so  misunderstood  by  them,  and  yet  so 
potent  that  out  of  it,  out  of  this  simple,  intuitive 
perception,  this  vague  feeling  of  immortality, 
has  arisen  every  theological  creed  ever  yet 
projected  for  the  perpetuation  of  individual 
life  in  another  stage  of  existence.  Thinkers  and 
reasoners  on  this  subject  actually  believe  they 
have  accepted  as  inevitable  the  death  of  the 
body,  but  they  still  hold  fast,  with  unswerving 
tenacity,  to  the  feeling  of  immortality  which 
the)'  find  implanted  in  all  men  ;  and  they 
have,  as  a  last  resort,  endowed  each  individual 
of  the  race  with  a  soul  that  is  supposed  to  live 
beyond  the  death  of  the  body.  This  soul  they 
have  provided,  out  of  their  ample  imaginations, 
with  many  and  various  modes  of  escape  from 
annihilation. 

Theology   offers   another    world    to    us  as   a 


OF    ITS   OWN    FULFILMENT  6 1 

substitute  for  its  unconquerable  desire  to  live. 
It  was  the  best  thing  that  could  be  clone  in 
the  past,  while  man  was  so  ignorant  of  the 
powers  of  his  body  ;  but  this  ignorance  is 
beginning  to  pass  away,  and  the  splendours 
of  the  heretofore  misunderstood  functions  of 
the  body  are  on  the  verge  of  asserting  them- 
selves in  a  manner  that  will  soon  astonish  the 
world. 

The  belief  in  the  power  of  death  belongs 
to  the  unawakened  intelligence  of  a  baby  race, 
not  yet  grown  to  even  the  faintest  conception 
of  what  it  is,  or  what  it  can  do. 

Religion  is  but  the  pointing  of  infallible 
intuition,  indicating  the  fact  that  there  is  a 
road  through  the  untrodden  wilderness  of 
fast-coming  thought,  which  experience  must 
traverse,  but  which  has  never  yet  been  traversed  ; 
and  which,  when  once  traversed,  will  put  an 
entirely  new  face  upon  our  implanted  belief 
in  immortality. 

Man  may  possess  a  soul  that  lives  beyond 
the  body,  and  I  hope  and  believe  that  he 
does ;  but  I  know  that  he  possesses  a  bod)-, 
and  I  know,  and  am  proving  individually,  that 
this  body  possesses  the  power  to  conquer  all 
its  disabilities  and  save  itself  here,  in  the 
present  world,  and  in  the  present  generation. 


CHAPTER   IX 

THE   ENDLESS   CREATIVENESS   OF   THE 
HUMAN    INTELLIGENCE 

I  AM  familiar  with  the  phenomena  of  spiritual- 
ism, and  I  will  say  that  it — of  all  the  theories 
extant — furnishes  by  far  the  best  basis  of  belief 
in  life  beyond  the  grave.  Spiritualism  is  not 
humbuggery.  It  is  a  genuine  thing.  Spirits, 
or  what  seem  to  be  spirits,  do  make  themselves 
visible  to  spectators  under  certain  conditions. 
The  only  doubt  concerning  the  matter  is  not 
in  the  genuineness  of  these  apparitions,  but  in 
the  character  of  them.  Man)-  a  time,  when 
entirely  alone,  they  have  appeared  to  me  ;  and 
at  first  I  thought  them  veritable  messengers 
from  the  other  side. 

Later,  I  did  not  know  whether  they  were 
genuine  spirits  of  the  departed,  or  thought 
images,  projected  by  my  own  mind.  Not  that 
they  were  unreal,  for  they  were  not  ;  they 
were  not  pictures  ;  they  were  tangible  shapes, 
and  lasted  for  several  minutes  at  a  time  ;  but 
were  they  spirits? 

At  this  time  the  human  mind  begins  to  reveal 

62 


ENDLESS   CREATIVENESS  63 

itself  to  me  as  a  mighty,  but  an  unknown  thing  ; 
as  the  seed  germ  of  a  power  whose  possibilities 
no  one  has  ever  tested,  or  ever  will  entirely 
test,  because  its  unfoldment  must  go  on  for- 
ever. 

That  the  human  mind  is  a  great  creative 
power  I  do  know  ;  that  its  power  to  create  is 
absolutely  limitless  I  believe. 

By  "  creative  power,"  I  mean  the  power  of 
making  manifest  the  wonders  that  are  capable 
of  being  manifested  out  of  the  unseen  life- 
principle,  the  animating  spirit  of  all  creatures 
and  all  creations ;  the  possibilities  existing  in 
latency  in  the  Law  of  Being,  or  the  Principle 
of  Life,  or  the  Law  of  Attraction  ;  these 
wonders,  which  depend  for  their  manifesta- 
tion upon  individual  recognition. 

The  three  terms,  Law  of  Being,  Principle  of 
Life,  and  Law  of  Attraction — spirit  of  all  things 
— are  different  modes  of  expressing  the  same 
thing.  There  are  times  when  one  of  these 
modes  of  expression  seems  best  adapted  to 
convey  my  meaning,  and  times  when  the  other 
modes  seem  best.  But  for  this  I  would  simplify 
the  matter  by  using  one  of  these  expressions 
only ;  and,  really,  it  would  be  more  strictly 
correct  to  do  so  ;  but  I  have  become  so  in  the 
habit  of  using  the  three  terms  indiscriminate!}- 


64  ENDLESS   CREATIVENESS 

that   I    must   beg  the  reader's   indulgence,  and 
keep  on  with  it. 

Individual  recognition  of  a  power  heretofore 
existing  in  latency  in  the  unseen  spirit  of  life 
may  be  called  a  creation.  The  power  to  re- 
cognise is  the  power  to  create,  if,  by  the  word 
creation,  we  mean  the  making  manifest  that 
which  has  always  existed,  but  has  not  existed 
for  us,  because  our  intelligence  had  not  ripened 
to  the  point  where  we  could  see  it. 

By  recognition,  then,  the  subjective  power 
embodied  in  the  life-principle,  the  spirit  of  all 
manifested  creatures,  becomes  an  objective 
creation,  or  use,  or  knowledge  ;  it  becomes 
manifest  or  made  visible. 

The  spirit  of  all  things  is  self-existent ;  all 
truth  already  exists.  The  universe  is  a  whole  ; 
it  is  complete  ;  nothing  remains  to  be  added  to 
it.     It  is  the  absolute  allness  of  being. 

The  word  truth  is  another  name  for  life. 
Man,  in  his  individual  capacity,  is  the  recog- 
niser  of  truth.  He  correlates  truth,  or  the 
principle  of  being,  to  the  extent  of  his  capacity 
to  recognise  it.  By  his  recognition  of  it,  he 
shows  it  forth  in  his  person.  A  man  is  as  he 
believes.  This  is  so  because  he  is  all  mind. 
The  entire  argument  in  favour  of  man's  power 
to  conquer  death  rests  on  the  fact  that  he  is 


OF    HUMAN    INTELLIGENCE  6$ 

mind — active,    vital,    undying    mind — and    that 
there  is  no  dead  matter,  as  has  been  supposed. 

All  things  which  we  call  matter  are  re- 
solvable into  one  and  the  same  element,  as  I 
conclusively  proved  in  a  former  treatise,  that 
element  being  thought,  mentality,  mind.  Forms 
change ;  the  body  may  perish,  but  life,  mind,  is 
immortal. 

Man,  being  a  mental  statement,  shows  forth 
in  his  personality  as  much  of  the  truth  of  being 
as  he  has  the  intelligence  to  recognise  ;  that  is, 
as  much  of  the  power  of  truth,  or  the  Principle 
of  Attraction,  as  he  can  understand,  he  makes 
manifest,  gives  form  to,  in  his  person.  It  is  by 
his  power  to  recognise  that  he  creates  or  gives 
form  to  that  which  always  existed  potentially, 
but  was  heretofore  formless. 

Thus,  in  the  absolute  sense,  there  is  no  new 
creation  ;  in  a  finite  sense  creation  is  continu- 
ous, and  will  never  cease.  When  men  know 
their  power  it  will  be  their  privilege  to  forever 
make  visible,  in  the  objective  world,  the  powers 
that  exist  in  the  infinitude  of  being,  or  the 
principle  of  life,  in  such  form  as  they  will. 

The  human  mind  is  constantly  revealing  new 
good,  or  new  uses,  or  new  knowledges,  out  of 
the  Law  of  Being,  simply  by  recognising  them 
as  possibilities  to  be  attained. 
E 


66  ENDLESS  CREATIVENESS 

Thus,  a  faint  conception  of  some  power 
beyond  that  which  has  ever  yet  been  mani- 
fested by  any  member  of  the  race  flits  through 
a  man's  mind,  only  to  be  discarded  as  absurd 
and  impracticable.  But  it  comes  again,  and 
stronger  ;  and  yet  again,  and  more  powerfully 
still,  until  he  begins  to  give  it  credence.  At 
this  point  his  mind  goes  on  exploring  trips 
into  unprospected  realms  of  thought,  and 
brings  home  much  evidence  to  sustain  him  in 
his  growing  belief,  until,  at  last,  he  knows  that 
a  thing,  heretofore  considered  impossible,  is 
possible ;  and  he  goes  to  work  and  demon- 
strates it  to  others.  We  call  his  work  a  crea- 
tion, and  in  a  limited  sense  it  is  a  creation. 

The  creative  power  is  the  power  to  recognise 
the  possibilities  for  development  existing  in 
the  spirit  of  life,  or  the  Principle  of  Attraction  ; 
it  is  a  power  vested  in  intelligence  ;  and  it  is 
by  this  power  alone  that  nature,  with  man 
at  its  head,  exists  ;  it  is  by  this  power  that 
nature,  with  man  at  its  head,  is  on  the  road 
of  endless  progression  through  an  infinite  realm 
of  ever-widening  possibilities. 

Life  is  thought  to  be  dual,  simply  from  the 
fact  that  it  is  both  seen  and  unseen.  On  its 
unseen  side  there  is  the  law  of  being,  otherwise 
called  the  Law  of  Attraction,  or  the   principle 


OF   HUMAN    INTELLIGENCE  6j 

of  life — the  spirit  of  life.  On  the  seen  side 
there  is  this  same  law  of  being  made  manifest, 
individualised,  personified,  by  its  own  recogni- 
tion of  its  powers  of  individualisation. 

All  nature  —  every  living  form,  everything 
that  is  visible  or  external — is  intelligence  ;  it 
is  that  which  has  recognised  the  unseen  moving 
power,  or  the  Principle  of  Attraction  ;  and  that 
which  recognises  is  mind,  or  intelligence. 
Therefore,  the  whole  objective  universe  is 
mind ;  living,  thinking  mind,  and  not  dead 
matter.  All  the  substances  we  see  or  feel,  or 
that  in  any  way  appeal  to  our  senses,  are 
mind,  and  not  matter.  Mind  or  intelligence 
ranges  the  entire  visible  universe ;  it  is  real 
substance ;  we  handle  it ;  we  weigh  and 
measure  it ;  we  cut  it  into  lengths  for  building 
material  ;  we  melt  it  and  run  it  into  bars  for 
our  railroad  cars  to  run  on ;  our  cars  and 
everything  we  manufacture  are  made  out  of 
various  conditions  of  the  one  substance  of 
mind. 

Mind,  in  its  myriad  forms,  ranges  every 
degree  from  solid  iron  and  granite  to  the 
rarest  ether. 

The  diamond  is  one  condition  of  mind  ;  the 
perfume  of  a  rose  is  another  condition  of  the 
same  substance ;    and  thought   is  still  another 


68  ENDLESS   CREATIVENESS 

condition    of    it,    and     the    most    subtle    and 
powerful  condition  that  we  know  of. 

The  most  difficult  task  the  metaphysician 
has  to  perform,  is  that  of  rendering  apparent 
to  the  conception  of  the  student  the  fact  that 
mind  or  intelligence  is  an  actual  substance, 
that  can  be  seen  and  handled. 

We  have  always  believed  mind  to  be  an 
unsubstantial  thing ;  a  principle  that  invaded 
the  dead  substance  of  matter  and  imparted 
a  temporary  show  of  life  to  it ;  but  we  have 
never  conceived  the  fact  that  it  is  matter 
itself. 

We  have  never  conceived  the  fact  that 
matter  is  mind  ;  that  matter  is  the  visible 
side  of  the  law  of  being ;  or,  in  other  words, 
that  it  is  the  law's  recognition  of  itself,  as 
light  may  be  said  to  be  heat's  recognition  of 
itself. 

But  this  is  so,  and  must  be  so,  because  no 
logical  philosophy  can  admit  the  idea  of 
deadness  in  the  universe.  The  universe  is 
a  universe,  and  not  a  diverse.  It  is  all  life, 
pure  life;  there  is  not  a  dead  atom  in  it.  If 
there  were  even  one  atom  of  death  in  it,  or 
the  possibility  that  there  would  ever  be  one, 
the  universe  would  not  be  a  whole,  and  it 
could  not  endure. 


OF    HUMAN    INTELLIGENCE  69 

But  it  is  a  whole  ;  it  is  the  unchanging  prin- 
ciple of  life  ;  it  is — on  its  unseen  or  spiritual 
side — the  Law  of  Being,  or  the  Principle  of 
Attraction  ;  the  law  or  principle  whose  one 
function  is  to  draw  or  to  unite.  It  is  love  in 
its  unalloyed  essence  ;  and  the  recognition  of 
it  is  intelligence,  or  mind,  expressed  in  a 
million  varying  beliefs,  ranging  the  entire  visible 
creation. 

The  tree  is  the  externalisation  of  the  Law 
of  Being,  or  the  Principle  of  Attraction,  to  the 
extent  of  the  tree's  intelligence.  The  tree  shows 
forth  as  much  of  the  good  or  the  life  embodied 
in  the  Law  of  Being  as  it  can  recognise. 

All  potentiality,  all  power,  all  possibility, 
reside  in  the  spirit  or  Principle  of  Being.  To 
conceive  of,  imagine,  think  or  desire  a  thing 
without  giving  it  form,  calling  it  out  of  the 
unformed  Principle  of  Being  is,  therefore,  an 
impossibility.  That  which  we  conceive,  we 
create  ;  that  which  we  imagine  to  be,  is  ;  that 
which  we  have  ceased  to  believe,  no  longer 
exists  to  us,  and  never  can  until  we  again 
accept  it  as  being  a  truth. 

Every  belief  assumes  a  form — the  form  of 
that  particular  belief.  No  matter  how  short- 
lived the  belief  may  be,  or  how  frail,  if  it  is 
a    belief    at    all,    it    is,    for   the    time    being,    a 


JO  ENDLESS  CREATIVENESS 

recognition  of  the  possibilities  resident  in  the 
spirit  of  being.  In  conceiving  a  form,  we  create 
it  within  the  one  universal  substance,  wherein 
all  creation  takes  place,  the  primary  or  mental. 

A  belief  differs  from  a  thought  only  in  the 
matter  of  fixedness  ;  a  thought  is  a  transient 
thing,  unless  it  becomes  fixed  in  a  belief,  and 
then  it  is  more  permanent,  and,  therefore,  more 
apparent ;  it  is  a  fraction  of  the  spirit  of  being 
in  more  decided  objectivity  than  a  mere  passing 
thought. 

Our  thoughts,  then,  are  real  things  ;  and 
though  usually  invisible,  being  in  a  great 
measure  under  the  control  of  our  bodies — 
which  are  the  sum -total  of  our  fixed  beliefs 
— they  are  too  frail  and  fleeting  to  assume 
the  substantial  appearance  of  bodies.  Never- 
theless, they  are  real  substance  and  have  form 
at  their  inception  ;  and,  though  invisible,  they 
do  become  objective  to  our  bodies,  and  go 
forth  as  living,  but  probably  as  short-lived, 
entities. 

Thoughts  are  real  because  they  are  intellectual 
conceptions  of  something  ;  and  there  can  be  no 
intellectual  conception  that  is  not,  in  its  degree, 
a  recognition  of  that  which  is — a  recognition  of 
some  phase  of  the  Principle  of  Being.  There 
can  be  no  recognition  of  that  which  is  not,  and, 


OF   HUMAN    INTELLIGENCE  7 1 

therefore,  even  the  frailest  and  most  fleeting 
thought  has  form,  whether  we  see  it  or  not. 

But  there  are  certain  conditions  of  a  man's 
mind,  usually  conditions  of  negation,  conditions 
of  abstraction,  during  which  he  is  not  noticing 
what  is  transpiring  in  his  mind,  when  it  is 
possible  for  his  thoughts  to  express  themselves 
without  the  help,  or  even  the  cognisance,  of 
the  person  by  whom  or  from  whom  they  are 
expressed.  In  this  way  they  may  abstract 
enough  of  a  man's  mentality  or  body  to  make 
themselves  visible,  not  only  to  the  man  him- 
self, but  to  others. 

The  first  time  I  saw  "  a  spirit "  was  when  a 
student  at  a  Catholic  school.  It  was  a  bright 
moonlight  night,  and  about  twenty  of  us  had 
taken  a  run  from  the  hall  door,  down  through 
the  crisp  snow,  to  an  old  tree  that  grew  near 
the  house.  I  stood  for  a  few  minutes  quite 
apart  from  my  companions,  and  found  myself 
looking  up  into  the  tree  in  that  condition  of 
thought  which  is  almost  entirely  unconscious 
of  itself.  I  was  looking  at  a  woman,  who  was 
standing  far  out  on  one  of  the  limbs  of  the 
tree,  and  who  was  balanced  lightly  on  one 
foot,  with  her  other  foot  swinging,  and  her 
arms  raised  as  she  held  a  pale,  blue  scarf  that 
the  wind  filled  and  swung  to  and  fro.      I  stood 


■J 2  ENDLESS  CREATIVENESS 

looking  at  this  marvellous  sight  without  one 
particle  of  fear  or  wonder,  or  any  other  feeling 
that  I  can  recall.  The  woman's  dress  was  like 
that  of  a  ballet  girl,  and  the  limb  on  which  her 
foot  rested  was  not  larger  than  a  riding  whip. 

But,  as  I  continued  to  look,  without  any 
special  interest  in  the  sight,  I  was  conscious 
of  the  babble  of  voices  kept  up  by  the  other 
girls,  though  unconscious  of  what  they  were 
saying,  until  one  of  them  cried  out,  "  Oh ! 
look  up  in  the  tree."  A  momentary  silence 
ensued,  broken  by  the  simultaneous  rush  which 
they  made  toward  the  house.  In  another 
instant  I  became  conscious  of  the  situation, 
and,  turning,  I  ran  after  them,  becoming  more 
frightened  with  each  step. 

Was  this  a  spirit,  or  was  it  a  projection  from 
myself? 

Since  then  I  have  had  many  experiences 
similar  to  this,  and  they  are  all  marked  by 
the  same  absence  of  a  certain  part  of  myself, 
that  prevents  the  feeling  in  me  of  fear  or 
wonder,  or  any  emotion  whatever.  The  re- 
membrance of  things  of  this  kind  has  often 
frightened  me  after  they  have  passed,  and  I 
have  many  times  felt  a  great  dread  of  their 
recurrence  ;  but  never  once  have  I  been  fright- 
ened, or  even  astonished,  at  the  time. 


OF   HUMAN    INTELLIGENCE  73 

In  the  same  frame  of  mind — a  condition  in 
which  I,  the  person  of  the  house,  seem  to  be 
almost  out  of  my  house — I  have  heard  voices 
that  spoke  to  me ;  but  they  never  told  me 
anything  beyond  what  I  could  have  conceived 
without  them. 

But,  perhaps,  the  most  singular  of  these 
experiences  has  been  a  manifestation  of  a 
power  that  lifts  me  up,  and  makes  me  feel 
that  I  do  not  weigh  an  ounce.  I  have  lain 
in  bed  in  a  room  where  the  light  burned 
brightly,  and  have  been  lifted — bed  and  all — ■ 
until  I  could  touch  the  ceiling  with  my  hand. 
I  have  sat  on  a  stout  table  and  been  lifted 
with  the  table  until  my  head  touched  the  top 
of  the  room. 

Friends  have  said  that  such  marked  and 
various  manifestations  as  these  could  not  be 
accounted  for,  except  on  the  theory  of  spirit 
agency. 

But  I  am  not  convinced  of  this,  though  I 
would  have  been  glad  to  accept  such  a  con- 
viction if  I  could  have  rested  in  contentment 
upon  it.  The  very  wonders  of  the  human 
mind,  as  they  begin  to  disclose  themselves  to 
me  during  the  years  I  have  been  devoting 
myself  exclusively  to  its  study,  have  made  it 
impossible    for    me    to    rest    such    phenomena 


74  ENDLESS   CREATIVENESS 

upon    the    generally   accepted    conclusions    of 
spiritualism. 

This  chapter  is  the  first  of  several  chapters, 
all  of  which  aim  at  the  establishment  of  the 
principles  on  which  I  base  my  belief  in  the 
power  of  man  to  conquer  death.  I  hope  I 
have  made  it  clear  that  the  whole  visible 
universe  is  mind  in  different  forms  of  ex- 
pression, but,  lest  I  have  not,  I  will  venture 
to  repeat.  I  say  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
"  dead  "  matter.  That  which  we  call  matter 
is  but  varying  expressions  of  the  one  omni- 
potent, omniscient  and  omnipresent  mind,  or 
mentality ;  that  which  was  and  is  and  ever 
will  be  ;  that  to  which  nothing  can  be  added, 
neither  taken  away.  The  unseen  is  as  much 
"  matter  "  as  the  seen.  The  seen  is  as  certainly 
"  mind "  as  the  unseen  ;  the  two  are  one  in 
endless  round  of  varying  expression,  in  which 
there  is  never  any  death  of  life,  but  only 
changing  forms  of  life.  The  flint  which  is 
to-day — the  flint  of  which  you  say,  "  It  is 
matter,  it  is  dead  " — to-morrow  shall  have 
crumbled,  shall  have  become  earth  ;  shall  have 
been  absorbed  into  the  stalk  of  growing  wheat ; 
shall  have  been  eaten,  and  in  the  brain  of 
man  be  retransformed  into  its  original  element ; 
that  from  which  all  things  have  birth — namely, 


OF   HUMAN    INTELLIGENCE  75 

mind.  All  things,  therefore,  are  mind  ;  nothing 
but  mind  ;  always  and  forever  mind  ;  no  differ- 
ence what  the  form  assumed  may  be. 

When  I  say  that  all  is  mind,  or  that  there 
is  no  such  thing  as  matter,  I  mean  that  there 
is  no  dead  thing — nothing  that  is  not  of  and 
resolvable  into  mind  ;  mentality  ;  potentiality  ; 
that  which,  though  not  discernible  by  the 
physical  senses,  yet  contains  all  that  is  or  can 
be.  I  do  not  mean  that  matter  is  nothing, 
that  it  has  no  existence.  I  mean  that  in  its 
last  analysis  it  is  mind,  intelligence,  and  it  is 
not  dead  ;  nor  can  it  ever  die. 

The  infinite  mind  is  measureless.  It  is 
omnipotent,  omniscient,  omnipresent.  In  it  is 
all  potentiality,  the  all  of  all,  and  outside  of 
it  nothing  is  or  can  be.  Does  life  exist,  and 
the  desire  for  life  in  man  ?  It  exists  also  in 
the  infinite,  and  it  was  the  desire  that  called 
forth  form,  which  first  caused  the  invisible  to 
become  visible  ;  which  caused  mind  to  assume 
the  form  of  rock  and  tree  and  animal,  and 
finally  of  man. 

And  when  men  clearly  perceive  this  truth, 
and  when  the  knowledge  of  it  shall  have  be- 
come truly  a  part  of  them — shall,  as  it  were, 
have  infused  their  conscious  selves,  will  they 
not  know  that  they  can  control  that  which  they 


?6  ENDLESS   CREATIVENESS 

are?     Knowing  is  being.     When  men  know  that 
they  are  deathless  the}'  will  have  become  so. 

If  man  and  all  nature  were  dead  matter,  then 
there  would  be  good  reason  for  death  to  hold 
the  sceptre  over  life  ;  but  the  fact  that  what 
has  previously  been  called  dead  matter  is  an 
ever -living,  ever -progressive  substance,  which 
constantly  evolves  individual  life  out  of  itself, 
cannot  fail  to  destroy  the  power  of  death  as 
soon  as  the  truth  and  the  law  are  made  known. 

In  order  to  make  all  clear  I  must  show  the 
reader  something  of  the  wonderful  powers 
vested  in  mind.  I  have  spoken  of  what 
appeared  to  be  spirits,  but  which  may  simply 
prove  to  be  some,  as  yet,  misunderstood 
function  of  the  mind.  As  I  go  on  I  shall 
speak  of  other  things  that  prove  the  almost 
undreamed-of  power  of  mind  ;  I  do  so  in  order 
to  show  that  there  is  nothing  impossible  to  the 
human  mind,  and  in  this  way  lead  the  reader 
to  see  that  death  is  not  going  to  be  a  difficult 
thing  to  conquer,  since  its  conquest  only 
depends  upon  the  farther  expansion  of  our 
minds.  And  this  expansion  depends  exclu- 
sively on  our  own  effort. 


CHAPTER   X 

ALL  GROWTH  IS  A  REVOLT  AGAINST  THE 
CLAIMS  OF  THE  SO-CALLED  LAW  OF 
GRAVITATION 

No  man  has  tested  the  powers  of  his  own  mind  ; 
no  man  knows  its  mysterious  complications,  or 
dreams  of  the  strange  seed  lying  dormant 
within  it,  and  capable  of  springing  up  into  the 
blossoming  and  fruitage  of  such  wonders  as  it 
would  be  madness  even  to  name  in  these  pages. 
But  in  these  years  of  study  that  I  speak  of, 
enough  has  been  revealed  to  me  of  the  giant 
power  sleeping  in  the  brain  of  the  race,  to  keep 
me  from  wandering  off  to  other  worlds  for  a 
solution  of  its  exceptional  actions.  Many 
things  concerning  it  that  will  seem  fabulous  to 
others,  I  know  to  be  true  ;  and,  indeed,  so 
great  have  become  my  conceptions  of  its  possi- 
bilities, that  at  this  time  I  have  pulled  up  all 
the  stakes  that  have  ever,  to  me,  environed 
it,  and  have  established  it  in  my  belief  as  re- 
spondent in  all  particulars  to  that  omnipotent, 
omniscient  and  omnipresent  principle  of  life 
that  men  call  God. 


78  THE   SO-CALLED   LAW 

I  think  it  will  readily  be  seen  how — there 
being  no  nothing,  and  thoughts  being  things — 
a  thought  may  appear  in  objectivity  from 
the  thinker,  and  thereby  become  discernible  by 
the  physical  senses  of  the  thinker,  to  others 
who  may  be  present. 

The  same  thing  may  be  said  of  the  voices  we 
hear. 

But  these  explanations  go  for  nothing,  so 
long  as  it  remains  that  some  seemingly  invisible 
power  can  overcome  the  law  of  gravitation  in 
the  human  form,  and  lift  it  from  the  earth  with 
evident  ease. 

This  matter  remained  a  mystery  to  me  for 
years,  until  I  learned  that  man  had  the  power 
to  become  master  of  the  law  of  gravitation,  after 
which  he  could  float  in  the  air  at  his  will. 

"But,"  some  one  remonstrates,  "you  had  no 
knowledge  of  this  power,  and  yet  you  floated  ; 
therefore,  it  must  be  that  some  power  outside 
of  yourself  lifted  you." 

For  a  long  time  I  reasoned  this  way  myself; 
and  I  believed  that  I  was  lifted  by  spirit  power. 

But  after  a  time  I  considered  how  it  had  ever 
been,  that  some  seemingly  accidental  exhibi- 
tion of  a  new  power  had  come  as  a  forerunner 
to  open  the  eyes  of  men  to  a  new  possibility 
within    themselves ;    and    I    began    to   see  that 


OF   GRAVITATION  79 

this  experience  of  mine  might  belong  to  this 
same  class  of  premature  revelations. 

I  could  readily  admit  that  if  it  were  in  a 
man's  power  to  overcome  the  law  of  gravity 
(so-called),  accidental  conditions  of  thought 
might  arise  within  him,  unanalysed  by  him- 
self, that  for  the  time  being  would  lift  him 
into  the  air. 

The  more  I  thought  about  it,  the  more  I 
became  convinced  of  it.  The  more  I  reasoned 
on  the  law  of  gravitation,  the  law  which  seems 
to  draw  all  things  to  the  centre  of  the  earth, 
the  more  clearly  I  saw  that  it  was  the  Law 
of  Attraction  in  its  action  upon — so-called — 
dead  matter ;  and  that  there  was  no  power 
that  could  of  itself  draw  anything  toward  the 
earth's  centre,  provided  the  thing  to  be  drawn 
did  not  want  to  be  drawn  in  that  direction. 

That  any  substance  or  thing,  no  matter  how 
powerful,  could  refuse  to  obey  this  law,  proved 
at  once  that  there  was  a  higher  power  than  the 
law,  or  else  that  the  law  was  not  understood. 

Of  course,  I  at  once  assumed  that  the  law 
was  not  understood. 

The  law  of  gravitation  is  that  power  which 
draws  towards  the  centre  of  the  earth ;  but 
what  is  the  Law  of  Attraction  ? 

I   answer  that  there   is    but  one  law,  and   I 


SO  THE  SO-CALLED    LAW 

shall  call  it  the  Law  of  Attraction.  The  — 
so-called  —  law  of  gravitation  is  the  negative 
action  of  the  Law  of  Attraction.  In  other 
words,  it  is  the  Law  of  Attraction  in  its  action 
upon  what  is  called  dead  matter  ;  it  is  power- 
less upon  all  substances  in  proportion  to  the 
intelligence  of  the  substance.  It  cannot  compel 
the  intelligent  will  of  any  creature  to  obey  it. 
Indeed,  I  may  state  it  in  this  way  ;  that  while 
the  law  of  gravitation,  the  law  that  draws  to 
the  earth's  centre,  is  operative  upon  mind  in 
its  unawakened  condition,  it  is  powerless  to 
act  on  mind  in  which  a  will  has  been  developed. 
As  weak  a  thing  as  a  blade  of  grass  obeys 
its  own  will  ;  a  will  that  leads  it  upward  instead 
of  downward  toward  the  earth's  centre.  I  saw 
it  rise  out  of  the  earth,  and  begin  its  little 
journey  toward  the  sun.  I  saw  as  feeble  a 
thing  as  a  crawling  worm  overcome  the  earth's 
attraction,  and  mount  a  tree  trunk,  climbing 
upward  in  obedience  to  its  own  awakening  per- 
ceptions of  the  Law  of  Attraction  expressed 
in  itself  as  will  power. 

I  saw  that  while  "dead  matter,"  which  is 
mind  unconscious  of  its  own  will,  was  held  to 
the  earth's  centre,  that  "  live  matter,"  which  is 
mind  conscious  of  its  own  will,  was  on  a  journey 
in  another  direction. 


OF   GRAVITATION  8 1 

Then  there  is  no  law  that  holds  objects  to 
the  earth's  centre,  provided  the  objects  have  a 
will  to  travel  toward  the  sun.  This  so-called 
law  is  the  law  of  inertia  ;  the  law  of  death  to 
the  dead  ;  or,  in  strict  truth,  it  is  the  absence, 
as  nearly  as  can  be,  of  the  Law  of  Attraction, 
which  is  the  only  law  of  life  ;  the  law  of  growth. 

The  law  of  gravitation  is  the  negative  pole 
of  the  Law  of  Attraction,  or  the  law  of  being. 

The  peach  ripens  and  falls  ;  it  falls  toward 
the  earth.     Why  ? 

Because  it  is  so  much  inert  substance,  and  it 
is  drawn  to  a  larger  body  of  inert  substance. 
If  the  peach  had  been  larger  and  heavier  than 
the  earth,  it  would  have  drawn  the  earth  to  it. 

In  bodies  of  equal  deadness,  by  which  I 
mean  bodies  that  are  equally  lacking  in  con- 
sciousness of  will,  the  power  to  draw  each  other 
is  dependent  on  their  size  and  weight.  But 
once  introduce  into  inert  mind  (matter)  the 
vitalising  principle  of  conscious  will,  and  the 
whole  statement  is  changed.  Size  and  weight 
have  nothing  to  do  with  the  drawing  power ; 
the  conscious  will  is  under  obedience  only  to 
its  own  desire.  The  latent  power  slumbering 
in  matter  has  awakened,  and  it  has  come  under 
obedience  to  the  Law  of  Attraction. 

It  has  evolved  a  will  that  its  intelligence 
F 


82  THE   SO-CALLED    LAW 

recognises  as  its  leading  power,  and  it  goes  to 
any  place  toward  which  the  will  may  point, 
whether  toward  the  earth  or  away  from  it.  If 
it  goes  away  from  the  earth,  as  all  advanced 
life  does  in  its  growth,  it  goes  as  far  away  as  its 
intelligence  permits  it  to  go.  That  is,  it  goes  as 
far  as  it  believes  that  it  can  go ;  its  belief  in  this 
particular  marking  the  limit  of  its  intelligence. 
Flying  creatures  are  more  unlimited  in  their 
belief  in  this  one  matter  than  the  creatures  that 
remain  on  the  earth.  And  it  is  because  they 
do  realise  more  of  the  Law  of  Attraction  than 
other  creatures  that  they  have  sprouted  wings. 
The  law  of  cosmogony  expresses  itself  in  con- 
formity with  a  belief  in  the  Law  of  Attraction  ; 
and  evolution  has  steadily  proceeded  on  this 
principle  from  the  first  effort  of  individualism 
to  man. 

The  Law  of  Attraction  is  the  law  of  gravita- 
tion raised  from  a  basis  of  unconscious  life  or 
ignorance  of  life,  to  a  conception  of  life  in 
which  the  will  becomes  the  principal  factor, 
and  elects  for  itself  the  direction  in  which  it 
shall  be  attracted.  Intelligence  refuses  obedi- 
ence to  mere  bulk  and  weight,  and  follows  any 
attraction  that  seems  good  to  it. 

A  grain  of  sand  is  under  obedience  to  the 
law  of  gravitation  ;   the  earth  holds  it  to  itself. 


OF   GRAVITATION  83 

But  imagine  the  grain  of  sand  changed  to  a 
minute  insect ;  it  instantly  declares  its  freedom 
from  the  law  that  influences  the  grain  of  sand, 
and  lifts  itself  up  above  the  earth.  And  it  will 
retain  its  independence  of  the  earth  until  it 
dies ;  then  the  earth,  by  the  law  of  deadness, 
in  which  bulk  and  weight  make  the  attraction, 
claims  its  own,  and  the  insect  lies  helpless 
upon  it. 

The  whole  tendency  of  evolution  is  from 
inertia  to  activity  ;  from  deadness  to  life ;  from 
obedience  to  the  law  of  inert  or  unawakened 
substance  —  the  law  of  gravitation  —  to  the  in- 
telligent attraction  which  is  the  law  of  awakened 
or  conscious  substance. 

In  strict  truth  there  is  no  dead  substance, 
because  all  substance  holds  life  in  latency  ;  but 
until  the  latent  life-principle  begins  to  express 
itself  intelligently,  this  substance  is  under 
obedience  to  the  law  of  gravitation  only. 

But,  as  substance  does  express  itself  more 
and  more  intelligently,  the  law  of  gravitation 
loses  its  force,  and  the  Law  of  Attraction  is 
substituted.  Thus  all  individual  lives  work  out 
their  own  freedom  through  intellectual  growth. 

Intellectual  growth  is  the  liberation  from  the 
law  of  gravitation,  which  is  the  law  of  death,  or 
rather  the  no-law  of  life  ;  because  death  has  no 


84       THE   SO-CALLED   LAW   OF  GRAVITATION 

law,  but  is  simply  the  negation  of  the  Principle 
of  Attraction,  which  is  the  law  of  life. 

Alan  becomes  more  free  from  the — so-called 
—  law  of — so-called — dead  matter  with  every 
acquisition  of  intelligence  he  makes  ;  and  he  is 
now  approaching  a  plane  of  knowledge,  where 
he  will  realise  that  by  the  Law  of  Attraction 
he  can  break  his  allegiance  to  the  earth  and 
float  in  the  air.  And  this  will  simply  be  the 
beginning  of  his  exploits  in  this  direction. 

As  I  —  from  some  peculiar  and  accidental 
consciousness  of  this  great  truth  —  actually 
floated  in  the  air,  so  the  time  will  come  in 
which  I  shall  learn  how  I  did  it ;  and  thus  be 
able  to  do  it  again. 

It  is  probable  that  in  my  then  negative 
condition  a  higher  sense  of  freedom  took 
possession  of  me,  which  my  uneducated 
faculties  would  have  denied,  and  thus  frus- 
trated the  phenomenon,  but  that — for  the  time 
being  —  they  were  inoperative,  and  did  not 
put  in  their  ignorant  protest. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE   ONE    MIGHTY   FACTOR    IN    RACE   GROWTH 
IS   THOUGHT 

MAN  is  a  compendium  of  all  the  lives  that 
have  existed  before  him  ;  but  he  does  not  show 
forth  the  full  power  of  all  those  individual  lives. 
He  is — in  his  present  stage  of  development — 
a  compromise  of  them  all. 

The  power  of  all  of  them,  and  vastly  more 
power,  lies  stored  in  his  brain,  but  it  has  not 
yet  been  expressed  in  his  personality.  It  is  in 
his  power  to  express,  and  by  his  intelligent 
belief  in  its  presence  he  will  be  able  to  ex- 
press it. 

Belief  in  self  is  the  key  that  unlocks  all 
this  stored  power.  If  I  did  not  believe  I 
could  draw  a  bucket  of  water  out  of  the  well, 
I  would  never  draw  it.  If  I  did  not  believe 
I  could  write  an  article,  I  could  never  write 
it.  The  paralytic  believes  he  cannot  move 
his  hand,  and  he  does  not  move  it.  The 
mental  healer,  in  his  treatment  of  this 
disease,  does  not  even  think  of  the  hand  ;  he 
directs  his  thought  to  the  patient's  brain,  and 
85 


86  ONE    MIGHTY    FACTOR 

corrects  his  mistaken  belief  in  his  own  power. 
All  disease  is  of  the  brain.  A  belief  in  disease 
is  the  brain's  own  under-estimate  of  its  power. 
The  brain  has  weakened  in  its  belief  of  what 
it  is  and  what  it  can  do,  and  the  body  shows 
forth  the  brain's  error. 

A  woman  came  to  me  one  day  with  the 
sickness  of  a  decade  in  every  part  of  her  body. 
Long  years  of  a  life  totally  unappreciated  by 
others,  and  a  lack  of  self-esteem  on  her  own 
part,  had  brought  her  to  the  condition  in  which 
I  saw  her.  Her  wonderful  eyes,  and  the  entire 
wreck  of  her  queenly  beauty,  impressed  me 
greatly.  A  few  minutes'  conversation  showed 
me  the  situation.  I  did  not  offer  to  treat  her  ; 
I  told  her  how  beautiful  and  how  great  she 
was.  I  told  her  what  splendid  possibilities  I 
saw  in  her  mind  ;  she  knew  I  was  telling  her 
the  truth,  and  she  was  well  in  that  hour.  Day 
by  day  from  that  time  her  body  showed  forth 
her  renewed  trust  and  confidence  in  her  own 
intellect  ;  her  individuality  strengthened  until 
the  negations  that  had  once  submerged  and 
held  her  under,  became  the  servants  that 
ministered  to  her  uplifting. 

The  intellect  is  the  shaping  power  in  the 
body.  It  is  true  that  the  body  builds  the 
brain  ;    but  the  brain  reciprocates  by  building 


IN    RACE   GROWTH  8? 

the  body.  Every  higher  thought  a  man  has 
records  itself  in  some  added  power  in  the 
body  ;  and  if  this  could  go  on  day  by  day, 
the  body  would  become  more  and  more 
a  revised  expression  of  a  revised  mode  of 
thinking. 

And  just  so,  in  the  opposite  direction,  the 
body  may  and  does  deteriorate. 

How  is  it  that  the  man  of  science  can  take 
an  animal's  skull,  and  from  its  shape  tell  us 
just  what  the  animal  was  like,  and  what  it 
fed  on,  and  all  the  particulars  concerning  it? 
It  is  because  the  brain  shapes  the  body ;  and 
when  he  gets  a  correct  idea  of  the  brain  from 
the  shape  of  the  skull,  he  has  no  difficulty  in 
describing  the  animal  that  owned  it,  and  naming 
the  family  to  which  it  belonged. 

Familiarity  with  the  correlation  between  the 
brain  of  the  animal  and  the  different  members 
of  the  body  of  the  animal,  also  enables  these 
men  of  science  to  work  the  same  problem 
backward.  They  will  take  any  well-defined 
bone  of  the  animal  and  describe  all  the  animal's 
clearly  marked  characteristics.  The  relation 
between  the  brain  and  the  different  parts  of 
the  body  is  exact. 

Surely  there  is  a  big  lesson  in  this  for  him 
who  thinks.     From   the  very  earliest  forms  of 


88  ONE    MIGHTY   FACTOR 

organisation  clear  up  to  man,  there  has  been 
a  steady  increase  of  brain  power,  and  a  steady 
improvement  in  the  shape  of  the  head.  Not 
in  a  single  instance  has  there  been  a  sudden 
jump  from  low  to  high.  And  never  has  there 
been  any  real  retrogression.  There  have  been 
instances  in  race  growth  which  seemed  like 
retrogression,  but  which  were  truly  a  kind 
of  a  retrogressive  progression  ;  being  but  a 
temporary  halt  in  the  upward  journey  of  the 
incessant  brain,  or  a  going  back  a  few  paces 
to  bring  up  the  lagging  forces. 

There  is  no  missing  link.  Race  growth  has 
been  as  even  and  steady  as  the  growth  of  a 
child  from  infancy  to  manhood.  And  the  one 
factor  in  its  growth  has  been  thought. 

Let  no  one  imagine  that  thought  is  confined 
to  human  beings  alone.  All  creatures  think. 
Animals  think  ;  plants  think  ;  and  even  crystals 
think.  They  think  the  thoughts  that  render 
them  obedient  to  the  operation  of  the  Law  of 
Attraction,  by  whose  power  they  are  drawn 
into  certain  forms.  The  grass  thinks ;  it 
aspires  or  desires,  and  its  aspirations  or  de- 
sires find  a  ready  response  in  nature,  and  the 
result  is  growth.  Every  upward  step  in  the 
scale  of  creation  is  marked  by  a  greater  power 
of  thought  in  the    creatures  ;  and    this  greater 


IN    RACE   GROWTH  89 

power  of  thought  produces  more  powerful 
creatures.  And  so  thought,  even  in  its  low- 
est forms,  expressed  in  desire,  relates  the 
creature,  under  the  ever  active  Principle  of 
Attraction,  to  that  which  it  desires  ;  and  the 
stones  emerge  into  gigantic  vegetation ;  the 
vegetation  becomes  concentrated  into  a  drop 
of  protoplasm  ;  the  protoplasm,  by  the  same 
potency  of  thought,  expressing  the  ever-grow- 
ing desire  for  an  enlarged  life,  greater  happi- 
ness and  greater  freedom,  sprouts  a  digestive 
system  ;  puts  forth  from  its  body  the  necessary 
instruments  by  which  to  supply  the  digestive 
system  with  food  ;  eyes,  ears,  claws,  legs, 
members  both  offensive  and  defensive,  until 
the  ripened  man,  with  his  noble  brain,  is  here. 

And  still  the  same  system  of  growth  goes 
on.  The  ripened  man  is  man  only  in  his  form  ; 
the  strength  and  character  of  his  animal  pro- 
genitors have  passed  into  his  brain  and  live 
there  in  disguise,  or  show  forth  in  cunningly 
devised  methods  for  the  attainment  of  that 
power  which  the  beasts — his  forefathers — took 
by  force  of  muscle  and  cunning.  Society  is  a 
compromise  based  on  fear,  and  religion  is  a 
superstition  founded  also  on  fear. 

And  yet  this  condition  is  only  an  attitude 
in  race  growth,  and  it  is  all  right  for  the  stage 


90      ONE    MIGHTY    FACTOR   IN    RACE   GROWTH 

of  growth  it  represents.  It  is  not  the  desirable 
thing  any  more  than  the  bitter  and  unripe  peach 
is  the  desirable  thing  ;  but  it  is  on  the  way  to 
becoming  the  right  thing.  It  will  always  be 
becoming  more  and  more  the  right  thing  ;  for 
it,  like  the  individuals  that  compose  it,  is  on 
the  road  of  endless  progression — forever  ripen- 
ing but  never  ripe  ;  forever  incarnating  in  itself 
more  and  more  of  the  vast  possibilities  latent 
in  the  law  of  being — the  Principle  of  Attraction 
— but  never  exhausting  the  fulness  of  the  law, 
and,  therefore,  never  ripe. 


CHAPTER  XII 

MAN  HAS  NO  FETTERS  BUT  THOSE  OF  HIS 
OWN  IGNORANCE  :  AND  NOTHING  BUT 
HIS  OWN  INTELLIGENCE  WILL  LIBERATE 
HIM    FROM   THEM 

To  think  in  the  old  ruts  is  to  remain  in  the 
old  conditions. 

To  think  expansively  is  to  grow  endlessly  in 
the  direction  of  freedom  and  happiness. 

Death  is  not  growth.     It  solves  no  problem. 

Man  at  this  time  is  all  that  his  animal  pro- 
genitors are,  and  more.  The  strength  of  muscle 
which  they  exhibited,  finds  its  expression  in 
him,  in  his  brain  and  not  in  his  muscle.  The 
quality  of  every  faculty  they  possessed  is  con- 
densed in  his  brain  ;  in  ceasing  to  become 
animal,  and  in  becoming  more  and  more  man, 
the  attributes  that  expressed  themselves  in  the 
body  of  animals  express  themselves  with  ten- 
fold more  force  in  the  brain  of  the  man. 

In   fact,  the  process  of  growth  has  been    a 

process  of  brain   making.     The   awakening   of 

life  from  the  inertia  that  holds  it  obedient  to 

that   downward    attraction,    called    the    law   of 

9i 


92  MAN    HAS    NO    FETTERS 

gravitation,  has  been  one  steady  advancement 
of  all  things  toward  brain  ;  toward  the  power 
to  think  ;  toward  the  freedom  that  thought 
alone  can  insure  ;  toward  the  conquest  of  en- 
vironment that  thought  alone  can   master. 

I  am  not  making  an  exaggerated  statement 
when  I  say  that  the  road  of  life,  the  road  of 
progress,  is  from  a  belief  in  that  inert  substance 
we  call  matter,  to  a  belief  in  mind. 

This  inert  substance  we  call  matter,  and 
which  is  under  the  (so-called)  law  of  gravita- 
tion, is,  in  point  of  absolute  truth,  all  mind  or 
brain  or  thought ;  but  it  is  unawakened  mind, 
and,  therefore,  unconscious  or  "  dead "  mind  ; 
mind  whose  powers  are  latent  or  unexpressed. 

The  steady  effort  of  the  ages  has  been  to 
liberate  this  substance  from  its  unconscious 
obedience  to  the  law  of  gravitation — the  law 
of  the  dead  to  the  dead — by  awakening  it  to 
a  consciousness  of  its  power  to  think  ;  thus 
demonstrating  to  it  that  it  is  mind,  living  and 
active  and  free,  subject  to  the  Principle  of 
Attraction  only. 

I  cannot  repeat  too  often  the  great  fact  that 
there  is  no  dead  matter  ;  that  there  is  no  death 
in  the  universe ;  that  what  is  called  dead 
matter  is  unawakened  mind  ;  that  every  atom 
in   the    world   is    mind,   either    awakened    to  a 


BUT   THOSE   OF   IGNORANCE  93 

sense  of  its  own  power,  or  holding  its  power 
in  the  unconsciousness  of  latency.  It  is  on  this 
mighty  truth  that  man's  salvation  depends. 

What  we  call  matter  is  the  recognition  of 
something.  Every  atom  of  it  is  a  magnet.  A 
magnet  is  that  which  recognises  the  Principle 
of  Attraction  within  itself.  If  the  recognition 
is  so  feeble  that  it  yields  obedience  only  to  that 
comparatively  unintelligent  force  expressed  in 
bulk  and  weight,  it  recognises  bulk  and  weight, 
and  yields  its  recognition  to  it,  and  is  then  said 
to  be  under  the  law  of  gravitation. 

But  no  matter  what  it  recognises,  the  fact 
that  it  recognises  anything  at  all  proves  that 
it  is  mind.  Dead  matter  cannot  recognise. 
Recognition  is  a  faculty  of  mind. 

The  law  of  being,  the  Principle  of  Attraction, 
exists.  No  one  knows  anything  about  it  except 
that  it  exists. 

It  is  that  unseen  principle  running  through 
all  things,  to  whose  power  man  can  add 
nothing.  It  is  unchangeable.  Our  recogni- 
tion or  comprehension  of  it  changes  constantly, 
but  it  never  changes. 

All  nature,  with  man  at  its  head,  is  the 
recognition  or  the  comprehension  of  this 
principle.  Not  a  perfect  recognition  or  com- 
prehension   of    it — it    can    never    be    perfectly 


94  MAX    HAS    NO    FETTERS 

comprehended — but   a    partial    and    constantly 
improving  and  growing"  comprehension  of  it. 

Men  call  this  Law  of  Attraction  God  ;  but 
the  word  is  unscientific  and  misleading.  Sub- 
stitute the  word  "  law "  for  "  God,"  in  Pope's 
lines,  and  they  would  explain  all. 

"The  universe  is  one  stupendous  whole 
Whose  body  nature  is,  and  law  the  soul.'' 

As  our  bodies  are  the  perception,  or  the 
understanding,  or  the  recognition  of  our  spirits, 
so  is  all  nature  the  perception,  or  the  under- 
standing, or  the  recognition  of  this  infinite  spirit 
— the  unseen  life-principle  which  I  call  the 
Law  of  Attraction  or  the  law  of  being. 

Understanding,  recognition,'  the  power  to 
perceive,  does  not  belong  to  anything  but 
mind  ;  therefore,  all  visible  things  are  mind  ; 
no  matter  how  apparently  dead  this  substance 
called  matter  may  seem,  the  Law  of  Attraction 
is  latent  in  it,  and  in  the  farther  process  of 
evolution  it  will  recognise  the  fact,  thus  proving 
that  it  is  mind. 

And  mind,  no  matter  how  crude  it  may  be, 
is  one  form  of  brain,  out  of  which  the  higher 
or  governing  brain  proceeds  ;  the  brain  which 
begets  the  intelligent  will  ;  whose  mandate 
governs  the  entire  bodv. 


BUT   THOSE   OF   IGNORANCE  95 

It  may  be  said  that  nature  is  all  brain 
ranging  numberless  degrees  from  coarse  to  fine, 
from  the  crudest  substance  to  the  highest 
thought,  as  water  ranges  from  solid  ice  to  the 
invisible  gas  generated  by  steam. 

That  wonderfully  volatile  fluid  we  call  elec- 
tricity is,  in  its  own  way,  a  certain  form,  and  a 
very  vital  form,  of  recognition  of  the  Law  of 
Attraction,  and  is,  therefore,  mind,  brain,  intelli- 
gence or  thought. 

Nature,  being  in  all  particulars  the  recogni- 
tion of  that  vital  principle  called  the  Law  of 
Attraction,  it  will  be  seen  that  she  is  all  mind, 
whose  power  to  grow  lies  in  her  continued 
power  to  think  more  intelligently  than  she 
has  previously  thought. 

Our  visible  world  has  now  thought  itself  up 
to  its  present  position,  which  is  a  higher  point 
of  intelligence  than  it  has  ever  before  reached. 
From  the  fiery  mass  that  it  was  in  our  first 
knowledge  of  it,  where  the  Law  of  Attraction 
between  the  atoms  seemed  so  feeble  in  its 
power,  because  so  little  recognised,  that  it 
appeared  to  be  rather  a  law  of  repulsion,  on  up 
through  every  grade  of  ripening  recognition  of 
the  law,  with  its  consequent  forms  of  greater 
intelligence — we  have  come  to  this,  our  present 
plane  of  thought. 


96  MAX    HAS    NO   FETTERS 

And  yet  here,  in  spite  of  our  past  record, 
with  its  unflagging  development  in  every  direc- 
tion, there  are  thousands  of  our  people  who 
affirm  that  the  world  has  ceased  growing. 

Or,  rather,  I  may  say,  there  are  tens  of 
thousands — nay,  millions — who  do  not  know 
that  the  whole  visible  world  is  a  growth  in  the 
understanding  of  the  law  of  being  ;  who  do  not 
believe  it ;  and  who  are,  therefore,  unprepared 
to  accept  the  statement  that  its  position  in 
growth  is  still  in  infancy,  and  that  its  power  to 
keep  on  growing  is  endless. 

But,  whether  they  accept  it  or  not,  it  is  true  ; 
and  no  truth  even  approaching  the  glory  of  this 
truth  has  ever  been  announced  before. 

The  visible  world  grows  by  its  acquisition  of 
intelligence,  or  rather,  by  its  development  out 
of  itself  of  more  and  more  power  to  recognise 
the  unfailing,  the  infinite  possibilities  of  the 
Principle  of  Attraction,  which  is  the  law  of 
being. 

Thus,  the  potency  of  mind  increases  daily, 
and  as  it  increases  its  environments  give  way, 
and  happiness  and  freedom  come  more  readily 
within  its  grasp. 

The  idea  that  the  race  has  achieved  even  a 
minimum  of  the  power  that  is  in  store  for  it  is 
absurd. 


BUT   THOSE   OF   IGNORANCE  97 

The  idea  that  the  race  must  continue  to  wear 
its  fetters  because  they  are  "  God-imposed  "  is 
still  more  absurd. 

Man  has  no  fetters  but  those  of  his  own 
ignorance,  and  nothing  but  intelligence  will 
liberate  him  from  such  fetters. 

You  may  take  from  him  every  visible  environ- 
ment ;  you  may  heap  him  with  wealth  ;  you 
may  place  him  in  high  position  ;  but,  unless 
he  has  come  into  the  saving  knowledge  which 
an  intellectual  perception  of  his  own  boundless 
resources  yields  him,  he  is  not  free.  Ignorance 
still  holds  him  and  will  pull  him  down  to  old 
age,  feebleness  and  the  grave. 

And  what  but  these — old  age,  feebleness  and 
the  grave — are  our  real  fetters?  What  have 
we  gained  though  we  conquer  everything  else, 
and  these  remain?  It  may  be  that  the  spirit 
survives  the  body,  as  spiritualism  believes  it 
has  demonstrated ;  but  even  in  this  case,  a 
man's  sphere  of  activities  is  removed  from  his 
workshop,  the  earth  ;  and  his  death  is  a  break 
in  what  should  be  an  unbroken  line  of  growth. 

I  do  not  believe  that  true,  healthy  growth 
can  proceed  through  the  tortuous  weakness 
of  old  age,  decrepitude  and  death.  True  intel- 
ligence, the  farther  recognition  of  the  Law, 
which  alone  is  growth,  is  not  in  these  condi- 
G 


98  MAN    HAS    NO    FETTERS 

tions.  Nothing  is  in  these  conditions  but  the 
denial  or  the  non  -  recognition  of  the  Law ; 
which  is  a  slipping  back  from  a  certain  condi- 
tion of  incarnate  intelligence  into  a  condition 
of  ignorance,  wherein  the  previous  condition  of 
intelligence,  the  incarnate  condition  of  it,  is 
denied  or  cancelled. 

Even  in  this  denial  or  cancellation  of  the 
previous  condition,  it  may  be  that  the  spirit 
survives,  and  I  believe  that  it  does  ;  but  I  do 
not  believe  that  the  person  has  gained  by  the 
change  ;  indeed,  I  feel  certain  that  he  has 
lost ;  and,  though  the  loss  may  not  be  irre- 
parable, yet  it  is  a  mighty  loss  and  ought  to 
be  avoided. 

And  it  can  be  avoided. 

If  I  did  not  know  that  the  loss  of  the  body 
— which  is  the  condensed  bulk  of  the  man's 
beliefs — could  be  avoided,  I  would  never  have 
written  so  much  as  the  first  line  of  this  book. 

But  I  do  know  it. 

I  have  frequently  been  asked  to  establish 
this  statement  by  producing  an  instance  in 
which  some  one  had  conquered  death. 

There  was  a  time  when  there  was  no  animal 
life  on  this  planet  at  all  ;  did  the  fact  that 
there  was  none  then  form  a  true  basis  of  belief 
that  there  would  never  be  any  ? 


BUT   THOSE   OF   IGNORANCE  99 

Because  the  cave-dwellers  had  never  produced 
a  Plato,  was  that  a  valid  reason  for  supposing 
there  would  never  be  one  ? 

Those  who  are  limited  to  a  belief  that  the 
race  is  ripe,  and  that  there  will  be  no  farther 
development  than  there  has  already  been,  are 
in  no  condition  either  to  deny  or  affirm  the 
statements  I  am  prepared  to  make  on  this 
subject.  They  do  not  know  that  the  race  is 
a  growth.  They  have  never  examined  its  past 
history ;  this  history  that  began  millions  of 
years  before  it  actually  appeared  in  its  present 
form  ;  and  their  opinions,  as  weighed  against 
the  opinion  of  one  who  has  learned  the  situa- 
tion by  heart,  are  absolutely  worthless. 

I  have  studied  this  matter  of  race  growth 
for  many  years.  I  began  to  be  the  race's 
champion  and  defender  when  a  child.  I  was 
scarcely  out  of  my  teens  before  a  burning  sense 
of  disgust  for  the  foolish  and  false  theologies 
of  the  day  took  possession  of  me.  I  knew 
that  we  were  not  wilful  sinners  against  a 
higher  power,  but  simply  ignorant  children 
feeling  our  way  through  intellectual  darkness, 
and  stumbling  at  every  step.  Without  knowing 
it,  having  no  positive  information  by  which  to 
bolster  up  my  belief  on  this  subject,  I  simply 
held    to    it   because   it  was  part  of  me,  and   I 


IOO  .MAN    HAS    NO   FETTERS 

could  no  more  get  rid  of  it  than  I  could  get 
rid  of  my  head.  It  became  the  dominant  force 
of  my  existence,  and  the  chief  source  of  my 
vitality.  In  the  midst  of  sickness,  it  kept  me 
whole  ;  in  positions  that  would  have  been  death 
to  another,  I  was  unscathed. 

In  point  of  fact,  it  was  nothing  more  than 
a  larger  seeing,  a  deeper  recognition  of  the  Life 
Principle,  than  that  possessed  by  the  average 
person. 

Having  more  life,  I  felt  more  life,  and  death 
seemed  farther  away  and  more  indefinite  to 
me  than  to  others. 

As  I  grew  older,  the  possibility  of  avoiding 
it  entirely  began  to  take  form  in  my  intelli- 
gence. It  was  not  that  I  feared  death,  for 
it  never  seemed  sufficiently  real  to  fear.  The 
idea  of  overcoming  it  came  to  me  as  a  part 
of  my  growth,  in  which  it  seemed  better  to 
acquiesce  consciously,  so  that  I  might  thereby 
note  every  step  of  its  progress.  Naturally 
observant  and  introspective,  I  was  curious 
about  it ;  all  my  interest  was  aroused  and 
something  firmer  than  interest ;  a  deep-seated 
determination  to  carry  the  thing  through  to 
success  became  a  fixed  factor  of  my  mind. 

It  is  strange  how,  by  simply  holding  an 
idea   or   belief,   it   aggregates   to   itself  certain 


BUT   THOSE   OF   IGNORANCE  IOI 

mental  building  material,  until  it  stands  im- 
pregnable and  apparently  deathless.  This  is 
now  the  condition  of  my  belief  in  the  possi- 
bility of  immortality  in  the  flesh.  I  have  not 
read  books,  I  have  not  sought  outside  of  myself 
for  reasons  to  strengthen  my  position  ;  I  have 
held  to  it  simply  because  it  has  held  to  me  ; 
and  out  of  my  own  organism  has  been  unfolded 
the  course  of  reasoning  by  which  I  have  demon- 
strated its  truth  to  myself.  I  believe  in  it  as 
firmly  as  I  believe  in  my  personal  presence  in 
this  room  ;  and  the  world  is  going  to  believe 
it  before  many  years  shall  pass. 

It  is  true  that  the  spirit  of  Malthus  is  wide- 
spread at  this  stage  of  human  development,  and 
questions  are  frequent  as  to  what  will  become 
of  the  earth's  overflowing  population  if  im- 
mortality in  the  flesh  should  become  possible. 
The  natural  Malthusian  is  one  who  has  not 
penetrated  even  to  the  slightest  degree  into  the 
realm  of  the  ideal,  where  alone  immortality  in 
the  flesh  can  become  possible.  He  does  not 
know  that  life,  when  lifted  from  its  belief  in 
the  deadness  of  matter,  enters  the  thought 
realm,  in  which  the  supply  is  equal  to  the 
demand. 

But  this  is  so.  As  soon  as  a  man  steps  up 
from  a  belief  in  matter  as  dead  substance,  and 


102  MAN    HAS    NO    FETTERS 

perceives  that  all  is  life,  and  that  every  form  of 
life  is  on  the  wing,  as  it  were,  from  lower  to 
higher,  and  that  there  is  no  stagnation  possible 
to  growth — he  will  then  know  that  the  earth 
will  not  be  overcrowded  by  a  too  rapidly  ac- 
cumulating population. 

The  old  saying  that  "  there  is  room  at  the 
top"  applies  here.  The  pioneers  in  civilisation 
or  in  thought  always  find  themselves  rather 
lonesome  than  otherwise.  The  space  outside 
the  herds  is  unlimited.  Especially  is  this  true 
in  the  realm  of  thought ;  the  realm  of  the  ideal, 
which  we  are  now  on  the  verge  of  entering. 

It  is  true  that  the  world  would  soon  become 
overcrowded,  if  people  should  keep  producing 
children  who  would  never  die,  unless  some  way 
should  be  provided  for  them  to  leave  the  earth. 

But  the  entire  range  of  creation  is  open  to 
man,  and  there  is  nothing  but  his  ignorance  of 
his  own  powers  and  privileges  that  will  keep 
him  in  one  place. 

It  is  true  that  no  God  will  ever  interfere  in 
his  behalf  to  lift  him  into  more  enlarged  spheres 
of  activity  ;  but  no  God  will  ever  prohibit  him 
from  lifting  himself  into  these  spheres. 

Indeed,  such  lifting  is  correlated  to  the  man's 
lifted  and  enlarged  thought.  As  the  man  ex- 
pands in  his  thought  life,  he  will   be  met  by 


BUT   THOSE   OF   IGNORANCE  IO3 

more  expansive  conditions  ;  and  the  possibility 
of  fettering  him  to  one  point  in  the  universe 
will  cease.  It  is  by  thought  expansion  that  a 
man's  fetters  fall  from  him. 

Thought  is  the  conqueror  of  everything  that 
hampers  and  binds.  It  cannot  make  even  the 
smallest  conquest  over  its  surroundings,  that  it 
does  not  come  at  once  into  relation  with  ex- 
ternal conditions  better  suited  to  its  enlarged 
sense  of  freedom. 

Indeed,  it  almost  seems  as  if  these  freer  con- 
ditions constantly  pressed  in  on  the  thought 
of  the  race,  as  if  consciously  resolved  to  be 
recognised. 

The  croakers  of  the  world  cried  out  that  the 
coal  beds  were  becoming  exhausted,  and  that 
the  race  was  doomed  in  consequence.  A  wider 
range  of  thought  was  correlated  by  the  sub- 
stance of  electricity,  and  the  world  came  out 
of  its  nervous  chill  on  the  subject  of  coal. 

Because  balloons  have  proved  a  failure,  does 
anyone  suppose  that  the  air  will  never  be  navi- 
gated ?  Even  if  gas  and  machinery  fail  to 
accomplish  this  thing,  there  is  a  power  latent 
in  man's  organism  that  will  do  it ;  namely,  the 
power  of  thought,  to  which  all  substances  are 
negative. 

Immortality   in    the   flesh    would    be   neither 


104  MAN    HAS    NO    FETTERS 

possible  nor  desirable  if  man  were  to  remain 
the  helpless  and  ignorant  creature  that  he 
now  is. 

It  would  not  be  desirable  because  the  universe 
can  furnish  no  excuse  for  the  perpetuation  of 
ignorance.  It  would  not  be  possible,  because 
ignorance  is  death  already  ;  at  least,  it  is  the 
nearest  approach  to  death  that  life  renders 
possible. 

To  keep  the  race  forever  alive  in  its  present 
animalised  condition,  would  be  to  perpetuate 
ignorance  ;  to  keep  it  as  a  stagnant  pool  in  the 
heart  of  universal  progression  ;  and  this  could 
not  be.  Perpetual  change  is  the  order  of  life. 
He  who  catches  on  to  higher  thought  and  holds 
it  with  a  faith  so  firm  that  it  crystallises  into 
belief,  is  on  the  upward  move,  where  higher 
influences  meet  him,  and  fix  his  thought  in 
tangible  substance. 

He  who  turns  from  his  higher  thought,  doubt- 
ing its  practicability,  pinches  himself  into  con- 
stantly lowering  conditions,  until  he  is  pinched 
out.  There  is  progression  for  the  one,  and,  at 
least,  a  temporary  retrogression  for  the  other  ; 
but  there  is  no  standing  still.  Therefore,  im- 
mortality in  the  present  status  of  universal  race 
thought  here  in  this  world  is  not  possible  now. 

But  the  dawn  of  it  is  here.     The  beginning 


BUT   THOSE   OF   IGNORANCE  105 

of  that  credence  in  the  human  ideal,  which 
alone  will  usher  it  in,  is  here.  It  is  here  for 
no  less  a  reason  than  because  woman,  with 
her  strongly  intuitional  nature,  has  come  to 
the  front.  Woman  has  brought  the  morning 
of  a  new  era  with  her ;  and,  as  her  feet  obtain 
firmer  standing  in  the  slushy  quagmire  of  the 
world's  present  condition  of  thought,  the  morn- 
ing of  her  day  will  brighten  into  the  full 
splendour  of  a  noon  that  will  arrest  and  hold 
the  entire  interest  of  the  millions  of  dying 
souls  about  us. 

This  much  is  already  accomplished.  The 
beginning  of  the  dawn  is  here.  Universal 
thought  has  begun  to  move.  A  ripple  runs 
along  the  full  length  of  its  connected  links,  even 
though  it  is  only  the  few  who  stand  in  the 
front  that  are  capable  of  seeing  the  light  that 
shines  so  brightly  ahead. 

If  this  movement  had  to  be  confined  to  our 
earth,  as  the  Malthusians  all  must  imagine, 
then  its  scope  would  be  so  small  as  to  furnish 
a  reason  for  their  doubts.  But,  because  man's 
growth  is  limitless — and  by  his  ever-increasing 
power  of  thought  I  know  that  his  growth  is 
limitless — the  fact  shadows  forth  the  possibility 
of  his  leaving  the  earth  when  he  shall  have 
learned  how  to  do  so. 


106  MAN    HAS    NO    FETTERS 

More  than  this.  In  the  economy  of  nature 
the  time  will  come  when  generation  will  lose 
itself  in  regeneration. 

Conditions  adapt  themselves  to  each  other. 
When  one  thread  is  spun  out,  there  is 
another  thread  waiting  there  to  meet  the  out- 
stretched hand  of  him  who  has  resolved  to 
go  ahead.  To  him  who  is  not  so  resolved, 
and  who  does  not  know  his  power  to  go  on, 
though  the  thread  is  there,  it  is  not  there  for 
him,  because  he  does  not  see  it.  And  so  he 
falls,  not  because  life  was  lacking,  but  because 
the  individual  intelligence  with  which  he  should 
have  grasped  it  was  wanting. 


CHAPTER   XIII 

DESIRE   THE   ORGANISING    PRINCIPLE 

Since  the  first  two  atoms  came  together  under 
the  Law  of  Attraction  and  produced  the  earliest 
specimen  of  individual  life  upon  our  planet,  the 
vitality  of  the  race  has  been  slowly  ripening 
up  to  the  point  where  immortality  in  the  flesh 
could  become  a  possible  thing.  As  the  vital 
powers  have  ripened,  conditions  have  also 
ripened,  to  meet  the  needs  of  more  vital 
creatures,  and  thus  the  supply  has  been  equal 
to  the  demand. 

Indeed,  the  saying  that  the  supply  is  equal 
to  the  demand  is  grounded  in  the  Principle 
of  Attraction.     It  is  one  of  the  absolute  truths. 

Whether  what  I  call  the  life  of  immortality 
in  the  flesh  is  desirable  or  practical  hinges 
on  one  point.  If  the  substance  all  about  us 
that  we  see  in  existing  forms  of  life,  the  forms 
of  minerals,  plants  and  animals  is  dead  matter, 
infused  by  living  spirit,  then  our  only  hope 
of  prolonging  our  lives  will  be  by  some  method 
that  will  release  the  spirit  from  the  matter. 
107 


IOS  DESIRE    IS 

And  this  position  is  accepted  as  the  truth 
almost  the  whole    world  over. 

Dead  matter  can  never  be  permanently  en- 
livened by  spirit,  nor  is  it  desirable  that  spirit 
should  load  itself  down  with  something  that 
is  forever  dead.  Moreover,  if  this  is  the  true 
condition,  it  never  has  been  necessary  for 
spirit  to  be  so  loaded  with  the  dead  weight 
of  matter ;  and  the  entire  combination  has 
been  a  very  grave  mistake,  ruining,  or,  at  least, 
deferring,  the  happiness  of  every  spirit  that 
ever  entered  the  material  life. 

If  I  knew  this  to  be  the  true  situation,  I 
would  never  move  my  hand  to  save  my  own 
life  ;  I  would  look  forward  to  the  time  when 
my  spirit  would  drop  its  load  of  death,  as  the 
chained  and  barred  prisoner  looks  forward  to 
the  hope  of  freedom. 

Long  and  earnestly  I  pondered  the  subject 
of  dead  matter  with  its  infusion  of  living  spirit, 
and  wondered  why  a  union  of  two  things  so 
diametrically  opposite  to  each  other  should  be 
either  necessary  or  desirable.  Presently  I  knew 
that  it  could  not  be  ;  because,  if  matter  is  dead, 
then  the  Law  of  Attraction  cannot  exist  in  it, 
and  it  is  absolutely  immovable  by  any  force 
whatever.  It  has  no  power  to  respond  to  any- 
thing ;   it  is  helpless  ;    without  the  principle  of 


THE   ORGANISING   PRINCIPLE  109 

cohesion  ;  and  entirely  useless  in  the  building 
of  worlds  or  of  men. 

In  this  thought,  which  I  knew  to  be  correct, 
I  touched  the  negative  pole  of  the  truth  I  was 
seeking. 

If  matter  was  a  dead  substance,  it  was  dead, 
and  there  was  no  inherent  power  in  it,  and  no 
latent  life.  It  was  simply  dead,  and  had  no 
place  whatever  in  the  universe  of  uses.  That 
the  substance  called  matter  did  exist  there  was 
no  denying,  even  through  the  visionary  process 
of  Christian  Science.  The  substance  existed  ; 
it  was  an  ever-present  and  an  indispensable 
reality. 

"  Indispensable  " — this  was  a  fortunate  word. 
Dead  matter  could  not  be  indispensable ;  the 
sooner  dead  matter  and  every  form  of  death 
should  be  dispensed  with,  the  better. 

What,  then,  was  the  substance  called  dead 
matter?  Did  it  have  life  of  itself?  I  answer — 
yes. 

Then,  if  it  has  life  of  itself,  what  need  has 
it  of  the  infusing  spirit  which  seems  to  be  a 
different  thing  from  it ;  the  infusing  spirit  that 
only  infuses  it  a  few  years  and  then  deserts  it, 
leaving  it  to  be  again  infused  by  other  spirits, 
or  to  remain  forever  helpless? 

The  more   I   pondered    on    this    subject,  the 


I  10  DESIRE   IS 

more  I  became  convinced  that  matter  had  life 
of  itself. 

To  have  life  is  to  be  capable  of  thought. 
This  proposition  brought  me  face  to  face  with 
the  great  truth  that  every  atom  in  the  universe 
had  power  to  think.  In  other  words,  that  every 
atom  was  transfused  with  the  Principle  of 
Attraction,  and  responsive  to  every  other  atom  ; 
and  on  this  fact  alone  rested  the  possibility  of 
organised  forms. 

By  slow  degrees  and  never-ceasing  thought, 
I  found  myself  in  an  immaterial  universe  ;  that 
is,  in  a  universe  where  all  is  living,  active,  vital 
intelligence,  or  mind,  or  thought,  or  brain,  or 
knowledge. 

Each  atom  was  not  a  dead  thing  infused  by 
something  else  ;  it  was  not  a  dead  thing  that 
yet  had  the  power  to  recognise  the  transfusing 
principle  of  life  within  it  ;  if  it  were  dead  it 
could  not  recognise  anything.  But  still  it 
existed,  and  was  responsive  to  other  atoms ; 
what,  then,  was  it  ? 

It  was  mind  itself;  and  mind,  which  is  the 
recognition  of  the  Law  of  Attraction,  or  the 
law's  recognition  of  itself — substance ;  actual 
substance,  to  be  seen  and  handled  ;  to  express 
in  its  own  appearance  its  own  belief  in  the  law, 
or  as  much  of  the  law  as  it  could  comprehend. 


THE   ORGANISING   PRINCIPLE  III 

Here,  all  in  an  hour,  the  whole  system  of 
evolution  opened  up  to  me.  The  external 
world,  the  world  of  mind,  is  in  constant  effort 
to  express  more  and  more  of  the  law  of  being, 
the  Law  of  Attraction,  which  is  the  principle 
of  life;  the  unseen  side  of  itself;  the  positive 
and  unchangeable  I  AM  ;  the  constantly  grow- 
ing recognition  of  which  gives  ever-improving 
expressions  of  itself,  from  the  smallest  and 
weakest  individualised  life  up  to  man ;  and 
from  man  as  he  now  stands  in  his  ignorance 
and  helplessness,  up  through  an  unending 
process  of  improvement,  by  a  constant  acquisi- 
tion of  new  truths,  or  an  ever-widening  recog- 
nition of  the  power  of  the  Law. 

The  Law  of  Being,  or  of  Attraction,  is  to 
the  visible  universe  what  heat  is  to  light.  It 
is  the  magnetism  in  the  magnet.  Every  atom 
is  a  magnet,  and  the  external  or  visible  part 
of  it  is  the  magnet's  recognition  of  itself,  just 
as  light  is  heat's  recognition  of  itself. 

All  power  is  in  the  law. 

By  all  power,  I  mean  all  power  of  organisation. 

In  our  first  knowledge  of  the  world,  as  stated 
before,  the  atoms  were  so  widely  diffused  as 
to  be  almost  beyond  the  reach  of  each  other's 
attraction.  Ages  passed  ;  and  the  law — always 
constant  to  itself  in   its   drawing    power — had 


I  12  DESIRE   IS 

condensed  the  fiery  mass  somewhat ;  had 
brought  the  atoms  closer  together,  so  that  its 
drawing  influence  began  to  have  a  greater 
effect.  Then,  as  the  ages  went  by,  the  drawing 
power  overcame  the  distances  more  and  more, 
and  masses  began  to  assume  form. 

Through  this  same  process,  always  increasing 
in  strength,  the  world  was  brought  to  a  condition 
where  it  became  possible  for  higher  conceptions 
of  the  Law  to  be  formed.  Rocks  adhered  ;  waters 
gathered  themselves  together ;  a  blade  of  grass 
put  up  its  daring  head,  and  the  first  protest 
of  intelligence  against  bulk  and  weight,  the 
first  rebellion  against  death,  recorded  its  tiny 
oath. 

But  the  poor  baby  life  did  die  ;  recognising 
nothing  but  the  first  faint  monition  of  endless 
individuality,  its  little  effort  lost  itself  to  become 
merged  in  another  and  greater  effort. 

And  so  one  species  merged  into  a  nobler 
one ;  one  genus  disappeared,  because  its  power 
to  recognise  nothing  farther  of  the  possibilities 
of  the  Law  became  its  environment ;  an  en- 
vironment that  nothing  but  dissolution  could 
break. 

But  always  the  power  of  the  Law  was  drawing 
the  atoms  to  closer  cohesion  ;  and  the  atoms 
thus    cohering   were,    by    their    very  existence, 


THE   ORGANISING    PRINCIPLE  I  I  3 

proving  the  greater  potency  of  individuals  to 
recognise  the  Law  of  Being  or  the  Principle 
of  Attraction. 

And  so  the  recognition  of  the  Principle  of 
Attraction  or  of  Being  has  proceeded  right 
through  the  ages  ;  and  so  it  can  continue  to 
proceed. 

And  although  recognition  of  the  Principle 
of  Attraction  is  the  externalising  power,  the 
power  that  makes  visible,  or  marks  the  show- 
ing forth  of  its  capabilities,  it  is  a  fact  that 
up  to  the  present  time,  this  recognition  has 
been  an  unconscious  recognition  ;  by  which  I 
mean  a  recognition  that  has  expressed  itself 
in  uses,  and  not  a  recognition  that  could  give 
a  logical  account  of  itself,  and  thereby  become 
a  conscious  recognition. 

Life  has  heretofore  proceeded  entirely  on  the 
unconscious  plane.  It  has  proceeded  in  the 
individual  by  the  individual's  recognition  of 
his  own  personal  desires. 

Desire  is  the  organising  principle  ;  from  first 
to  last  it  has  been  so. 

The  recognition  of  desire  is  the  recognition 
of  the  law  as  expressed  individually.  It  is 
the  individual's  recognition  of  the  magnetic 
or  attracting  power  which  he  sees  within  him- 
self. He  recognises  this  attraction  or  magnet- 
ic 


I  14  DESIRE    IS 

ism  in  himself,  and  it  becomes  the  law  of  his 
individual  life.  It  is  that  unseen  something 
within  him  that  always  cries  out  for  some- 
thing more  than  he  already  possesses.  It  is 
the  Principle  of  Life  ;  the  growing  principle  ; 
and  his  recognition  of  it  has  brought  him 
steadily  up  through  the  centuries  from  the 
lowest  condition  imaginable  to  his  present 
form,  intelligence  and  strength. 

In  obedience  to  his  unconscious  recognition 
of  this  life-principle  expressed  individually  as 
desire — he,  as  the  tiny  drop  of  protoplasm, 
acquired  a  digestive  system  and  all  the  ap- 
pendages necessary  to  supply  it  with  food. 

In  obedience  to  his  love  of  life,  or  his  desire 
to  have  his  life  perpetuated,  his  organism  pro- 
duced a  reproductive  system  ;  which  as  yet  only 
serves  a  part  of  his  purpose  ;  since  it  is  only  far 
enough  evolved  to  perpetuate  his  kind  without 
perpetuating  himself. 

While  generation  proceeds  in  one  unbroken 
stream  on  the  unconscious  plane  of  life,  re- 
generation is  not  possible  except  upon  the 
conscious  plane  ;  a  plane  that  the  race  is  now 
on  the  verge  of  reaching. 

All  growth  depends  upon  the  recognition  of 
the  law  ;  but  no  thing,  and  no  man,  can  recog- 
nise the  law  in  its  fulness.     Man  only  recognises 


THE   ORGANISING   PRINCIPLE  I  I  5 

the  law  in  himself,  as  it  is  expressed  in  his  desire 
for  something  more  than  he  possesses. 

The  recognition  of  my  desires  is  the  recogni- 
tion of  the  Law  of  Attraction  in  my  own  life, 
as  separate  and  apart  from  the  Law  of  Attrac- 
tion expressed  in  other  lives. 

The  desires  I  see  in  myself  are  evidence  of 
my  own  self-hood.  They  form  my  ego.  That 
I  am  not  in  all  particulars  like  my  neighbour 
is  because  my  desires  differ  from  his  ;  I  recog- 
nise in  the  law  more  good  than  he  does,  and 
thereby  show  forth  an  organisation  superior  to 
his  ;  or  I  recognise  less  good,  and  show  forth 
an  organisation  inferior  to  his  ;  or  both  of  us 
may  recognise  an  equal  amount  of  good,  but  of 
different  kinds,  and  may  show  forth  organisations 
equally  good,  but  different  from  each  other. 

And  this  has  been  the  case  all  down  the 
scale  of  being.  A  blade  of  grass  shows  forth 
as  much  good  as  it  recognises ;  so  does  a 
tree,  a  horse,  or  an  angle  worm. 

Our  bodies  are  the  records  of  our  beliefs  ; 
and  just  to  the  extent  that  we  have  believed 
in  our  desires,  which  are  of  the  Law,  indivi- 
dualised within  us,  we  have  been  true  to  the 
Law,  or  the  principle  of  growth,  and  have 
manifested  that  which  seemed  good  to  us ; 
therefore,    I    say   that   as  much  "  good "  as   we 


I  1 6  DESIRE    IS 

have  recognised  in  the  Law,  we  have  shown 
forth  in  our  bodies  ;  thus  making  our  bodies 
the  record  of  what  we  desired  and  believed  in. 

The  forms  of  life  have  been  growing  more 
complex  from  the  first  inception  of  the  first 
form,  which  was  nothing  more  than  the  cohe- 
sion through  the  Principle  of  Attraction  of 
two  or  three  of  the  primordial  life-cells. 

They  have  been  growing  more  complex,  be- 
cause as  they  aggregated  to  themselves  more 
and  still  more  of  the  life-cells,  their  desires 
became  more  numerous.  This  increase  in  the 
number  and  character  of  their  desires  was  all 
the  time  making  more  powerful  magnets  of 
them  ;  and  so  evolution  proceeded. 

Every  visible  manifestation  of  life — mineral, 
plant  and  animal — is  self-created. 

Life  may  be  called  two-fold,  even  though 
it  is  a  unit.  It  may  be  called  two-fold  because 
there  is  a  seen  and  an  unseen  side  to  it.  On 
the  unseen  side  we  have  the  Law  of  Being 
or  the  Principle  of  Life,  which  is  the  Law 
of  Attraction.  No  man  knows  anything  about 
it  except  that  it  exists.  We  sec  its  effects  in 
the  magnet ;  we  see  that  ever)-  life-cell  is  a 
magnet,  and  we  know  that  it  is  both  external 
and  internal  ;  both  seen  and  unseen  ;  both 
positive  and  negative.     The  positive  side  being 


THE   ORGANISING    PRINCIPLE  WJ 

the  Law,  which  is  unchanging ;  the  negative 
side  being  the  recognition  of  the  Law,  which 
is  the  external  side,  and  which  is  constantly 
changing  through  the  increasing  or  lessening 
power  of  individual  recognition. 

The  more  an  individual  recognises  of  the 
power  of  the  Law,  the  more  positive  he  be- 
comes. Man,  recognising  more  of  the  power 
of  the  Law  than  any  other  creature,  is  positive 
to  all  other  creatures  ;  and  being  positive  to 
them,  he  is  their  master.  They  supply  him 
in  all  his  many  wants.  He  cuts  down  the 
magnificent  tree  and  holds  its  individuality 
in  subservience  to  his  needs ;  he  kills  the 
animal  and  eats  its  flesh  in  order  to  satisfy 
his  desire  for  food  ;  he  becomes  greater  and 
stronger  all  the  time  by  sacrificing  lives  that 
are  negative  to  him.  These  lower  lives  pass 
constantly  into  his  life ;  his  life  would  pass 
into  some  life  higher  than  his  own,  but  for 
the  fact  that  his  constantly  growing  brain 
renders  unnecessary  any  life  higher  than  his. 
If  his  brain  found  its  limitation  in  serving 
a  non-expanding  range  of  uses,  like  those  of 
the  cow  or  the  horse,  then  nature  would  beget 
an  organisation  superior  to  his,  into  which  the 
increasing  knowledge  of  the  growing  race 
misht  extend. 


I  I  8  DESIRE    IS 

But  it  is  not  necessary  from  the  fact  that 
man  keeps  growing  and  increasing  in  know- 
ledge all  the  time  ;  in  this  way  proving  that 
he  has  no  limitation.  In  consequence  of  this 
fact  there  will  be  no  higher  organisation,  ex- 
cept that  into  which  his  present  organisation 
will  expand  by  the  farther  expansion  of  his 
intelligence  ;  or  his  farther  recognition  of  still 
greater  power  existing  in  the  Law. 

Intelligence  or  mind  is  the  visible  substance 
of  the  universe ;  it  is  simply  the  recognition 
of  the  Law  of  Being,  which  is  the  Law  of 
Attraction,  or  the  Life-Principle. 

Another  statement  of  this  idea  would  be 
that  the  words  "love"  and  "intelligence"  are 
an  explanation  of  it  all — love  being  the  un- 
seen principle  of  cohesion.  The  idea  expressed 
in  this  manner  is  not  new  ;  it  forms  the  basis 
of  Swedenborg's  theory,  a  theory  that  he  fails 
to  carry  out  into  particulars  in  his  very  vol- 
uminous writings. 

The  entire  trend  of  thought  is  from  physical 
to  metaphysical  ;  and  it  cannot  be  otherwise, 
since  race  growth  is  in  this  direction. 

A  belief  in  the  physical  as  dead  matter  is 
all  that  now  holds  the  race  back  from  the 
most  rapid  and  startling  growth.  Freedom — 
the  goal  of  the  world's  desire — lies  just  ahead, 


THE   ORGANISING    PRINCIPLE  119 

and  here  we  remain,  tethered  to  a  mistake, 
a  mistake  that  could  not  hold  us  one  moment, 
but  for  the  fact  that  we  are  all  mind,  and  that 
our  mistakes  are  our  bodies.  Our  mistakes 
are  our  beliefs  ;  they  are  our  fixed  modes  of 
thought.  Therefore,  they  are  our  beliefs  ;  and 
belief  is  the  body  of  the  individual.  The  body 
is  not  the  record  of  our  beliefs  ;  it  is  our  beliefs  ; 
it  is  the  sum-total  of  all  our  beliefs ;  for  belief, 
being  a  mental  thing,  is  real  substance  ;  and, 
whether  belief  is  true  or  false,  it  is  a  substantial 
thing  so  long  as  it  lasts. 

Believing  ourselves  living  spirits  chained  to 
dead  matter  is  a  mistake  as  potent  to  hold  us 
down  to  what  we  call  the  law  of  gravitation, 
as  if  matter  really  were  a  dead  substance, 
instead  of  being  what  it  really  is— pure  mind, 
the  recognition  of  the  Law  of  Being  — from 
which  it  is  inseparable. 

The  inseparableness  of  substance  from  the 
Law  that  is  its  invisible  partner,  when  once 
seen  in  its  true  light,  immediately  suggests 
the  idea  of  immortality  in  the  flesh  ;  especially 
when  taken  in  connection  with  the  fact  that 
man  is  self-creative. 

Indeed,  but  for  man's  belief  in  the  deadness 
of  matter,  and  his  still  more  foolish  belief  that  a 
God  made  him,  he  would  even  at  this  time  be 


120      DESIRE    IS   THE    ORGANISING    PRINCIPLE 

diseaseless  and  deathless  ;  he  would,  even  now, 
be  on  the  road  of  endless  progression,  led  ex- 
clusively by  his  desires  for  happiness.  He  would 
be  trusting  the  Law,  and  externalising  his  desire 
— which  is  the  Law  individualised  in  him  ;  and 
his  body  would  be  showing  forth  greater  power 
and  beauty  daily.  He  would  be  on  that  plane 
of  thought  where  his  body  (which  is  the  con- 
densed form  of  his  thought)  would  be  growing 
each  day  into  a  new  and  ever-beautifying 
revision  of  his  new  and  beautifying  acquisition 
of  intelligence. 


CHAPTER   XIV 

BELIEFS  :    BOTH    FIXED   AND    UNFIXED 

I  NOW  leave  it  to  the  reader  to  say  whether 
death  is  a  necessity  of  our  organisation,  or  a 
desirable  thing,  since  spirit  and  matter  are  not 
two  separate  substances  ;  and  I  will  return  to 
again  consider  what  seems  to  be  the  spiri-t 
forms  described  so  frequently  by  Spiritualists, 
and  seen  by  thousands  of  people. 

Our  bodies  are  the  condensed  forms  of  our 
thoughts,  or  our  beliefs.  Thought  and  belief  are 
in  some  degree  synonymous  ;  both  are  forms  of 
recognition  ;  both  are  mental  expressions.  A 
thought  seems  not  to  have  the  fixed  character 
of  a  belief;  but  it  may  become  a  belief,  and  in 
doing  so  it  will  take  its  place  among  other 
fixed  beliefs,  and  be  a  part  of  the  visible  body. 
Belief  is  simply  thought  that  becomes  fixed. 
The  body  is  thought,  but  it  is  thought  that  is 
fixed  ;  thought  whose  correctness  is  not  ques- 
tioned, and  (on  the  mental  plane,  where  we  do 
really  exist,  whether  we  are  aware  of  it  or  not,) 
becomes  visible.  Fixed  thought  is  belief;  and 
belief  is  visible  thought  expressed  in  a  thousand 

121 


122  BELIEFS 

different  forms,  each  form  being"  its  own  in- 
dividual recognition  of  the  possibilities  con- 
tained in  the  Law  of  Being. 

Thought — before  it  becomes  fixed  in  belief — 
is  invisible  to  our  undeveloped  perceptions  ;  it  is 
a  reality,  though  intangible,  just  as  the  perfume 
of  flowers  and  many  other  ethereal  substances, 
which  we  are  not  able  to  perceive  except  by 
their  effects. 

And  yet  the  power  to  see  these  fine  sub- 
stances is  latent  among  the  undiscovered 
possibilities  that  will  some  time  awaken  within 
us.  Even  now  we  get  occasional  evidences 
of  their  existence,  when  we  are  off  our 
guard  against  everything  but  the  common- 
place and  orthodox  attainments  of  the  present. 
We  sometimes  forget  that  we  believe  in  nothing 
but  what  we  call  "  established  facts,"  and  in 
these  moments  of  forgetfulness,  it  may  be  that 
some  mighty  power  within  us  steals  a  march 
on  us,  and  shows  itself  in  something  unex- 
pected to,  and  even  unacceptable  by,  our 
"  sober  senses." 

Then  it  is  not  impossible  that  the  thought 
which  has  so  far  mastered  us  as  to  render  us  in  a 
measure  unconscious  of  what  we  are  thinking, 
and  watchful  of  the  action  of  our  mind,  should 
suddenly  appear  before  us  in  the  objective. 


BOTH    FIXED   AND   UNFIXED  1 23 

It  is  a  living  thing  ;  each  atom  of  its  frail 
being  is  transfused  by  the  Law.  For  the  time 
being,  it  actually  has  an  individuality  of  its 
own  ;  an  individuality  quite  negative,  however, 
to  that  of  its  creator,  myself,  for  instance,  and 
holding  its  objective  form  in  ready  obedience 
to  my  caprice. 

This  is  the  real  condition  :  I  have  been  in 
a  reverie,  a  careless  state  of  mind,  when  my 
thoughts  were  shaping  themselves  uncontrolled 
by  my  will.  My  will,  which  is  my  ego,  being 
off  guard,  there  is  a  tendency  to  disintegration 
in  my  body  —  the  sum  of  my  fixed  beliefs. 
Then,  stray  thoughts,  beliefs  which  are  not 
fixed,  may  start  up  from  the  careless  or  in- 
dolent brain,  and  actually  become  sufficiently 
fixed  to  be  visible.  In  becoming  thus  partially 
fixed,  they  draw  upon  the  fixed  beliefs  (my 
body),  which  for  a  time  are  in  a  measure 
unfixed. 

And  here  we  have  the  double  presence,  the 
second  part)',  which  may  either  be  an  exact 
resemblance  of  ourselves,  or  the  resemblance 
of  some  picture  that  exists,  or  has  existed,  at 
some  previous  time  in  the  mind. 

I  recall  an  occasion  when  for  a  few  hours 
I  was  so  exceedingly  negative  that  these 
thoughts  took  objective   form  by  the  hundred. 


124  BELIEFS 

They  were  literally  annihilating  me,  and  1  was 
too  weak  to  resist  them.  My  life  seemed  to 
be  passing  out  into  them,  when  the  physician 
was  called,  and  by  giving  me  a  stimulant 
re-established  the  ego  in  my  organisation, 
which  actually  appeared  to  call  into  itself  and 
absorb  every  one  of  the  wandering  shapes 
that  were  disintegrating  my  body,  and  thus 
becoming  objective  to  me. 

That  thoughts  are  things  is  a  fact  that 
cannot  be  disputed.  We  might  as  well  say 
that  ether  did  not  exist,  because  it  is  invisible, 
as  to  say  that  thought  is  nothing  because  it 
is  not  seen  under  ordinary  conditions. 

There  is  no  nothing.  Wherever  the  Law  of 
Attraction  is  recognised,  even  in  the  feeblest 
manner,  there,  though  unseen,  exists  the  form 
of  that  recognition.  Recognition  is  form. 
Recognition  is  the  making  visible  of  the  Law. 
The  Law  is  the  only  thing  that  can  be  re- 
cognised. It  may  be  recognised  in  weakness 
or  in  strength  ;  but  wherever  it  is  recognised, 
no  matter  whether  the  recognition  is  weak  or 
strong,  a  manifestation  of  it  is  inevitable. 

Whether  this  explanation  will  apply  to  every 
phase  of  spirit  materialisation  or  not,  I  cannot 
say.  Nor  have  I  given  it  in  the  hope  that  it 
will  do  so  ;  for  there  is  no  pleasanter  thought 


BOTH    FIXED   AND    UNFIXED  1 25 

to  me  than  that  our  loved  and  dead  do  really 
live  after  they  have  left  this  sphere,  and  can 
return  to  us  again. 

Nor  does  the  fact  that  our  thoughts  may 
take  shapes  which — under  certain  conditions — 
become  objective  to  us,  invalidate  the  claim 
of  Spiritualism,  that  the  spirits  of  the  dead 
can  return  and  take  form. 

My  real  object  in  saying  what  I  have  said 
is  to  prove  to  the  reader  what  I  know  to  be 
true ;  that  there  is  no  nothing ;  and  that 
thoughts  are  things.  I  also  wish  to  establish 
the  fact  that  the  human  mind  is  an  unpro- 
spected  field,  and  that  no  one  has  even  the 
faintest  idea  of  its  latent  powers. 

In  the  matter  of  being  lifted  from  the  floor, 
to  which  I  alluded  a  few  pages  back,  in  con- 
nection with  other  Spiritualistic  phenomena, 
I  wish  to  say  that  this,  too,  may  be,  and  is, 
a  power  that  belongs  to  man  ;  one  that  he 
can  exercise  at  will  when  he  comes  to  know 
more  of  himself  and  his  relation  to  the  Law 
of  his  beinsr. 


CHAPTER   XV 

THE    LAW   OF   ATTRACTION 

In  attempting  to  define  the  seeming  difference 
between  the  law  of  gravitation  and  the  Law  of 
Attraction,  I  showed  that  this  seeming  differ- 
ence was  a  difference  in  the  degree  of  intelli- 
gence in  the  objects  that  were  attracted.  I 
showed  how  the  words  l>  death  to  death " 
would  explain  the  law  of  gravitation,  and 
"  life  to  life "  would  explain  the  Law  of 
Attraction  ;  in  short,  that  the  law  of  gravitation 
was  the  negative  pole  of  the  Law  of  Attraction, 
since  its  effects  were  manifested  in  objects  too 
ignorant  of  the  Law  of  Attraction  to  be  lifted 
by  it. 

I  said  that  with  the  first  awakening  of  intel- 
ligence, which  in  all  objects,  from  a  grain  of 
sand  up  to  a  man,  is  the  recognition  of  innate- 
desire,  the  objects  were  lifted  upward  instead 
of  being  held  downward.  The  Law  of  Attrac- 
tion is  therefore  the  Law  of  Life  in  evolution, 
while  the  law  of  gravitation  is  the  same  law 
of  life  in  latency.  All  is  life  either  in  action 
or  with  its  powers  of  action  latent. 

126 


THE   LAW    OF   ATTRACTION  12/ 

Therefore,  the  law  of  gravitation  is  the  Law 
of  Attraction  ;  but  being  the  negative  pole  of 
the  Law,  it  seems  to  be  rather  a  denial  of  the 
Law  than  the  Law  itself. 

The  law  of  gravitation  glides  by  impercep- 
tible degrees  into  the  Law  of  Attraction.  They 
are  the  same  Law,  the  seeming  difference  being 
the  different  degrees  of  intelligence  that  recog- 
nise it. 

The  speck  of  mould  lies  close  to  the  earth. 
It  does  not  recognise  the  principle  of  life  within 
it.  That  principle  of  life  is  desire.  The  Law 
in  individual  expression  is  desire  ;  and  after  a 
time  the  speck  of  mould  feels  the  monitions  of 
the  law  ;  recognises  the  desire — the  law — and 
becomes  what  we  call  a  living  organism.  It 
was  alive  before,  but  did  not  know  it.  That  is, 
the  Law  of  Attraction  was  in  it  because  it  is  in 
all  things  ;  but  the  recognition  was  wanting ; 
or,  rather,  the  degree  of  recognition  within  it 
was  too  undeveloped  for  observation. 

So  long  as  the  recognition  was  wanting,  or 
too  feeble  for  expression,  the  speck  of  mould 
was  simply  acted  on.  With  stronger  self- 
recognition  came  the  power  of  independent 
action ;  and  then  it  became  obedient  to  the 
Law  of  Attraction  within  it  as  expressed  in 
its  own  recognised  desire  ;  and  with  even  this 


128  THE    LAW   OF 

small  amount  of  freedom  it  moved  upward 
from  the  earth.  The  law  of  gravitation  in  it 
had  developed  into  the  Law  of  Attraction.  In 
strict  truth,  it  had  always  been  the  Law  of 
Attraction,  but  was  only  the  Law  of  Attrac- 
tion to  the  intelligence  that  recognised  it  as 
such. 

Thus  it  is  seen  that  a  recognition  of  the  Law 
of  Attraction  emancipates  from  a  belief  in  the 
law  of  gravitation,  or  from  the  non-belief  in 
the  Law  of  Attraction  ;  and  thus  intelligence 
becomes  master  of  death  to  the  extent  of  its 
power  to  recognise  the  Law  of  Attraction. 

I  shall  have  to  go  over  this  again  in  order 
to  make  it  clear. 

There  really  is  no  law  of  gravitation  ;  that  is, 
if  I  am  permitted  to  define  the  law  of  gravita- 
tion as  that  power  which  draws  all  objects 
towards  the  centre  of  the  earth.  For  there  is 
no  such  power. 

Every  atom  in  the  world  is  mind,  intelligence, 
recognition  of  the  Law  of  Life  within  itself,  that 
when  expressed  at  all  is  expressed  in  desire. 
This  Life- Principle  which  is  expressed  in  the 
individual  as  desire  exists  in  latency  in  every 
atom  ;  and  it  is  no  sooner  recognised  by  the 
atom  than  the  atom  acts  in  obedience  to  it. 
The  desire  in  the  atom  always  leads  away  from 


ATTRACTION  1 29 

the  earth,  and  not  down  into  it,  showing  that 
the  real  attraction  to  which  every  desire  points 
is  upward,  and  not  downward. 

The  tree  is  attracted  upward  and  goes  on 
being  attracted  upward,  in  obedience  to  its 
desire,  until  its  very  roots — in  a  broad  sense 
— are  freed  from  the  earth,  and  it  walks  on 
top  of  the  earth  in  a  form  of  greater  freedom. 
It  may  have  a  multitude  of  feet  on  the  ground, 
and  may  move  with  difficulty,  but  the  same 
Law  of  Attraction  keeps  growing  upon  its 
recognition,  until  in  the  lapse  of  ages  it  stands 
upon  four  feet.  And  so  the  power  of  recog- 
nition goes  on  for  ages  again  ;  and  it  has  so 
far  emancipated  itself  that  it  stands  on  only 
two  feet. 

And  still  the  power  to  recognise  the  Law,  as 
expressed  in  desire,  goes  on  ;  and  the  freedom 
from  the  so-called  law  of  gravitation  continues. 

This  is  the  case  to-day.  It  has  been  the 
case  always ;  and  who  is  there  to  limit  its 
progress  in  the  future? 

Man,  as  to  his  personality,  is  clear  mind  or 
intelligence.  He  is  the  Law  in  the  objective. 
The  Law  as  personified  in  desire  is  his  sub- 
jective side  ;  and  the  seeming  two  are  one. 

The  Law  is  inexhaustible.  Man's  recognition 
of  the  Law  has  its  limitations,  and  these  limita- 
I 


130  THE    LAW   OF 

tions  establish  his  shape,  and  the  shape  of 
every  object  in  nature. 

But  though  we  see  in  man's  present  shape, 
and  in  the  power  or  lack  of  power  manifested 
by  him,  the  limitations  of  his  intelligence,  yet 
there  is  no  valid  reason  why  there  should  ever 
be  a  limit  to  his  intelligence,  or  his  recognition 
of  the  Law.  The  Law  being  limitless,  his 
power  to  recognise  it  is  also  limitless.  And  as 
every  fresh  recognition  of  its  power  releases 
him  more  and  more  from  the  deadness  called 
gravitation,  and  puts  him  more  and  more  under 
the  influence  of  the  Law  of  Attraction,  which 
is  not  towards  the  earth,  but  away  from  it,  I 
say  the  time  is  coming  when  he  will  float  in 
the  air ;  and  that,  too,  without  any  foreign 
appliances,  and  without  any  effort  beyond  the 
simple  recognition  of  the  Law  of  Attraction. 
In  other  words,  he  will  float  in  the  air  because 
he  wants  to. 

It  is  impossible  to  form  anything  like  an 
adequate  idea  of  the  power  of  the  Law  of 
Attraction.  Every  form  of  organisation  de- 
pends upon  it.  Every  organised  form,  accord- 
ing to  its  needs,  recognises  the  power  of  the 
Law,  and  becomes  just  what  it  recognises ;  or 
shows  forth  in  its  external  self  that  which  it 
perceives  to  be  good. 


ATTRACTION  131 

Recognition  is  the  externalising  power ;  and 
it  is  something  that  grows.  The  Law  does 
not  grow ;  but  the  recognition  of  the  power 
of  the  Law  grows  constantly  in  the  mind  of 
the  untrammelled  thinker ;  and  this  is  why 
life  is  a  progression,  and  not  a  creation. 

Nothing  is  created  ;  nothing  ever  has  been 
created.  What  we  call  creation  is  the  thousand 
forms  of  recognition  of  the  power  of  the  Law 
of  Attraction. 

If  recognition  may  be  called  creation,  and 
in  one  sense  it  may  be  so  called,  then  forms 
are  self-created. 

They  are,  at  least,  self-manifested. 

It  is  a  half-intuitive  perception  of  this  fact 
that  has  started  the  belief  called  "  free  moral 
agency." 

If  free  moral  agency  means  the  power  to 
act  independently  of  the  Law,  then  there  is 
no  free  moral  agency  ;  for  the  Law  is  one  with 
the  power  that  exerts  it ;  and  the  nearest 
approach  a  man  can  make  to  freedom  is  through 
greater  knowledge  of  the  Law,  or  closer  con- 
formity with  it. 


CHAPTER   XVI 

THE   EGO 

"  Out  of  the  night  that  shelters  me, 
Black  as  the  pit  from  pole  to  pole, 
I  thank  whatever  gods  there  be 
For  my  unconquerable  soul." 

The  much  repetition  of  the  foregoing  pages 
would  be  unpardonable  but  for  the  fact  that 
nothing  short  of  repetition  over  and  over  again 
would  make  the  subject  clear  to  those  to  whom 
the  idea  is  new. 

There  are  two  parts  to  this  subject.  One 
relates  to  the  Law  of  Being,  or  Attraction  ; 
the  other  relates  to  individual  life  under  the 
Law. 

We  know  nothing  of  the  Law  except  that 
it  is  the  moving  spirit  of  all  life,  the  Life- 
Principle ;  that  it  fills  all  space  absolutely  full, 
leaving  no  room  for  the  least  particle  of  death. 
We  know  that  this  Life- Principle  is  altogether 
alive  and  vital,  and  altogether  good,  and  as 
it  fills  the  universe,  therefore,  the  universe  is 
altogether  alive  and  vital  and  good.  This 
statement   excludes   the    idea   of    either   death 

132 


THE   EGO  133 

or  evil.  And,  indeed,  there  is  no  death  and 
there  is  no  evil. 

The  Life-Principle,  the  Law,  is  the  containant 
of  all  possibilities.  Man  and  all  creatures  ex- 
ternalise in  their  own  personalities  these  pos- 
sibilities as  rapidly  as  they  recognise  them. 

Recognition  makes  apparent  or  visible  those 
possibilities  of  the  Law,  that  were  unapparent 
or  invisible  before  they  were  recognised.  In 
this  sense  —  the  sense  of  externalising  or 
making  visible  the  possibilities  of  the  Law 
— the  power  to  recognise  may  be  called  the 
creative  power  ;  and  from  this  time  on  I  shall 
speak  of  it  as  creative. 

Recognition,  then,  which  is  intelligence  or 
mind,  creates. 

I,  therefore,  come  to  the  second  of  the  two  parts 
of  this  subject ;  that  which  relates  to  creation. 

The  old  question  in  the  catechism,  "  Who 
made  you  ?  "  has  never  been  answered  correctly 
except  in  one  instance ;  at  least,  there  is  only 
one  instance  on  record,  and  that  will  be  found 
in  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin." 

When  Miss  Ophelia  propounded  the  question 
to  Topsy,  it  was  answered  correctly :  "  Nobody 
never  made  me.     I  'spect  I  growed." 

On  the  hypothesis  that  there  is  a  personal 
God,  who,  in  spite  of   His    personality — which 


134  THE   EGO 

means  His  limitation — still  fills  all  space  ;  and 
on  the  still  farther  hypothesis  that  He  made 
man  and  all  the  other  creatures,  I  think  it 
must  be  admitted  that,  for  an  individual  of 
His  power  and  boasted  judgment,  He  made 
a  very  poor  job  of  it  ;  so  poor  that  it  is  no 
wonder  He  got  tired  of  the  work  of  His  hands, 
and  gave  us  over  to  His  coadjutor,  the  devil, 
to  hide  it  out  of  His  sight. 

Compare  this  theory  with  the  theory  that 
the  race  is  a  growth,  and  that  it  takes  no 
step  forward  in  the  scale  of  being  except  by 
recognition  of  more  truth,  or  the  gain  of  more 
intelligence  ;  and  compare  it  as  it  now  stands 
with  what  it  was  at  the  time  of  the  cave 
dwellers,  and  see  if  it,  as  its  own  creator,  has 
not  the  right  to  be  proud  of  its  work. 

On  the  first  hypothesis  the  work  was  finished 
at  one  blow — as  it  were — and  it  was  a  wretched 
piece  of  work.  On  the  second  hypothesis  we 
see  the  never  -  ceasing  effort  of  intellect  to 
climb  higher  in  the  intellectual  scale  ;  and  as 
a  result,  an  unfinished,  but  a  constantly  pro- 
gressing race ;  a  race  that  we  admire  and 
respect  because  we  know  that  it  is  where  it 
is  by  its  own  effort ;  by  its  own  unceasing 
struggle  with  ignorance  ;  by  the  daily  heroism 
of  its  past  as  it  journeyed  through  untrodden 


THE    EGO  135 

wildernesses  of  thought,  without  a  solitary 
guiding  light  except  that  which  its  slowly  grow- 
ing and  hardly  gained  experience  yielded  it. 

Take  this  glorious  race  just  as  it  stands 
to-day,  still  fettered  and  still  clinging  to  its 
chains,  but  still  advancing  slowly  along  the 
road  that  promises  relief  from  them,  and  com- 
pare it  with  the  cut-and-dried  and  finished  race 
that  God  made,  and  note  the  difference  in  your 
feelings  for  the  two. 

In  God's  race  there  is  no  hope.  It  was 
completed  at  its  birth  and  has  done  nothing 
but  degenerate  ever  since.  God  made  it  de- 
pendent on  Himself;  and  it  now  finds  itself  in 
the  dilemma  of  an  abandoned  job  ;  God  having 
in  a  measure  washed  His  hands  of  it  and  left  it 
to  the  tender  mercies  of  its  arch-enemy,  whom 
God  also  made,  apparently  for  no  other  purpose 
than  that  of  a  scapegoat  for  His  own  mistakes. 

But  the  man-made  race  of  evolution  began 
in  the  smallest  possible  way.  It  was  not  only 
not  perfect  at  its  inception,  but  it  was  merely 
the  seed  germ  of  a  race.  It  had  no  God  to 
depend  upon  and  no  inspired  guide  to  lead 
it.  It  was  self-creative  and  self-dependent 
from  the  first,  and  it  felt  its  slow  but  sure 
way  up  from  its  beginning,  through  the  dark- 
ness of  absolute  ignorance.     It   had  no  guides 


136  THE   EGO 

but  its  mistakes.  These  mistakes  which  have 
been  imputed  to  it  as  sins  have  been  its  only 
guide-posts  to  point  it  in  the  right  direction. 
And  yet  it  has  forged  its  way  through  earth 
and  air  and  fire  and  water  and  tempest,  and 
the  dense  blackness  of  its  own  intellectual 
night,  to  its  present  standpoint,  where  it  sees 
the  dawning  of  light  at  last.  It  has  scored 
its  triumphs  in  the  conquest  of  a  myriad  of 
obstacles ;  it  has  covered  itself  with  bruises 
and  wounds  too  grievous  to  tell  of;  it  has 
left  thousands  of  its  numbers  to  mark  each 
upward  step  in  its  progress ;  and  it  is  here 
to-day,  blood-stained,  sick  and  sore  from  its 
head  to  its  feet,  but  dauntless  still,  and  covered 
with  the  glory  of  its  undying  courage. 

O,  beautiful  race  !  A  baby  race  even  yet ; 
still  foot-bound  in  the  long  gowns  of  its  in- 
fancy, but  ready  now  to  tear  away  each  hamper- 
ing bond,  and  walk  forth  in  the  broad  road  of 
an  infinite  freedom  towards  infinite  wisdom. 

Which  will  you  have — the  race  that  God 
made,  or  the  race  that  is  now  making  itself? 

Those  who  look  upon  the  race  to  condemn 
it,  exhibit  about  as  much  judgment  as  one 
who,  coming  to  the  orange  tree  at  my  window, 
should  taste  the  unripe  fruit  and  pronounce 
orange  culture  a  failure. 


THE    EGO  137 

If  God  made  the  race,  then  there  would 
be  no  need  for  any  action  upon  its  part  at 
all.  It  is  made  and  finished,  and  that  is  all 
there  is  of  it.  But  if  the  race  made  itself, 
which  it  surely  did,  then  it  has  an  endless 
work  before  it  in  making  itself  over  in  accord- 
ance with  its  ever-enlarging  and  ever-beautify- 
ing ideal. 

And  who  will  deny  the  presence  of  the  ideal 
in  man  ?  Man,  God-made,  could  have  no  use 
for  an  ideal,  since  God's  work  must  necessarily 
be  perfect  ;  it  might  have  the  power  to  re- 
trograde, but  it  evidently  could  have  no  power 
to  progress. 

And  yet  we  find  in  man  an  ideal  that  is 
always  far  ahead  of  his  present  attainment. 
This  would  not  be  in  him  if  God  had  made 
him ;  it  would  be  in  him  if  he  had  made 
himself;  it  would  be  the  beautiful  implanted 
hope  ever  leading  him  to  higher  growth,  to 
nobler  attainment. 

And  this  ideal  is  not  only  in  man,  but  it 
exists  in  every  organised  creature  from  the 
lowest  form  of  life  on  up  through  the  scale 
to  man.  It  is  the  aspiration,  the  desire,  the 
Law  incarnate,  whose  never-ending  possibilities 
are  foreshadowed  in  the  creature's  intuitive  or 
latent    powers   of  recognition.     It  is   the   very 


138  THE    EGO 

basis  of  growth  in  all  creatures,  and  links  all 
creatures  together  on  the  road  of  infinite 
progression  ;  proving  not  only  the  oneness  of 
the  Law,  but  the  oneness  of  the  Law's  recog- 
nition of  itself.  For  the  Law's  recognition  of 
itself  is  one,  though  expressed  in  individuals. 
It  is  one  unbroken  chain  of  recognition  that 
establishes  not  only  the  brotherhood  of  man 
with  man,  but  the  brotherhood  of  every  ex- 
pression of  life  with  every  other  expression. 
For  as  the  Law  is  one,  so  the  recognition  of 
the  Law  is  one ;  thus  demonstrating  the  whole- 
ness and  infallibility  of  the  universe. 

Every  life-cell  is  an  ego.  It  is  a  seed  germ. 
When — under  the  Law  of  Attraction — two  or 
more  of  the  life-cells  unite,  they  come  into 
one  understanding  of  the  Law,  not  into  two 
or  three  understandings,  and  the  two  or  three 
egos  become  one  ego,  and  possess  greater 
drawing  power  than  the  single  life-cell. 

This  is  shown  in  the  common  magnet.  It 
has  its  positive  and  negative  pole  and  demon- 
strates its  power  as  a  whole  magnet.  It  may 
be  broken  into  a  hundred  pieces,  and  each  piece 
will  be  a  perfect  magnet  with  its  positive  and 
negative  pole.  Weld  the  pieces  together  again, 
and  the  many  magnets  become  one  magnet. 
The  magnetism  is    indivisible  ;  the  recognition 


THE   EGO  139 

of  the  magnetism  may  be  individualised  ;  and 
it  is  individualised  endlessly  in  the  primordial 
life-cells.  The  drawing  together  of  the  cells 
and  their  cohesion  in  more  complex  forms  is 
individual  growth. 

In  individual  growth  the  drawing  power  of 
the  individual  is  constantly  increased ;  as  it 
increases  it  becomes  constantly  more  positive 
to  the  less  complex  individualities  about  it, 
and  masters  them  ;  by  mastering  them  it 
unites  their  power  to  its  own.  The  strength 
of  the  conquered  does,  in  a  sense,  pass  into 
the  conqueror ;  and  so  we  have  the  law  of 
individual  growth,  which  is  by  the  survival  of 
the  fittest. 

The  magnet's  recognition  of  its  own  magnet- 
ism is  its  recognition  of  the  Law  of  Attraction 
within  it. 

The  man's  recognition  of  desire  within  him- 
self is  the  recognition  of  the  Law  of  Attraction 
within  him. 

The  leading  difference  between  the  magnet 
and  the  man  is  that,  while  both  recognise  the 
Law  of  Attraction  within  themselves,  the  man's 
recognition  is  of  such  a  character  as  to  give 
birth  to  WILL  ;  the  conscious  ego ;  while  that 
of  the  magnet  has  not  advanced  so  far  on  the 
road  to  consciousness. 


140  THE   EGO 

In  the  early  stages  of  individual  growth,  the 
creature's  recognition  of  the  Law  of  Attraction 
within  it  is  perceived  to  be  simple  desire.  But 
this  desire  is  the  basis  of  all  future  growth. 
The  more  we  gratify  desire,  the  more  it  grows. 
This  is  equivalent  to  saying,  the  more  we  re- 
cognise the  Law,  the  more  of  the  power  of  the 
Law  we  embody ;  for  the  recognition  of  desire 
is  the  recognition  of  the  Law. 

The  desire  thus  recognised  by  the  creature 
has  no  moral  character  whatever ;  nor  has  the 
Law  itself  any  moral  character.  Morality  is 
an  external  thing,  and  belongs  to  the  intelli- 
gence. 

Desire  is  a  purely  selfish  attribute. 

What  then,  is  the  Law  of  Attraction,  the  Law 
that  men  call  God,  a  selfish  principle  ? 

The  Law  of  Attraction  has  no  character 
whatever ;  it  is  neither  selfish  nor  unselfish ; 
it  is  simply  the  drawing  power,  wJiole  and  i>i- 
divisible\  utterly  regardless  of  morality  or 
individual  rights. 

With  individualisation  comes  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  Law,  taking  the  form  of  desire.  It 
is  utterly  selfish  ;  it  is  the  ego  ;  it  is  the  "  I  "  in 
a  struggle  with  every  other  "  I." 

Its  selfishness,  from  its  first  inception,  is  only 
limited   by  its  lack    of  power.       It  is  its  own 


THE    EGO  141 

centre  of  the  universe,  and  its  own  effort  is  to 
draw  to  itself  all  there  is. 

The  selfishness  of  the  creature  increases  step 
by  step  with  the  development  of  higher  and 
still  higher  types  of  life.  Why?  Because  de- 
velopment is  nothing  else  but  the  still  greater 
recognition  of  individual  desire  ;  and  desire  is 
the  starting-point  and  the  basic  principle  of 
self;  it  is  selfishness  or  selfhood. 

The  desire  of  the  individual  is  only  limited  in 
its  selfish  grasping  after  everything  it  sees  by  a 
still  greater  desire  ;  the  desire  for  a  secure  life. 

So  long  as  all  creatures  act  from  selfish  desire, 
there  is  one  constant  state  of  warfare,  and  the 
world  is  under  the  dominion  of  fear.  The  de- 
sire for  peace  and  security  dominates  the  desire 
for  possession,  and  gradually  it  becomes  the 
highest  desire  that  justice  shall  reign,  because 
justice  guarantees  the  greatest  happiness.  The 
desire,  without  ever  forsaking  the  central  stand- 
point of  self,  always  bent  on  its  own  happiness, 
has  developed  a  better  conception  or  a  better 
recognition  of  what  it  takes  to  produce  happi- 
ness. 

Individual  life  rests  exclusively  on  selfish- 
ness ;  the  effort  of  each  to  attain  its  own  ends  ; 
its  own  happiness.  The  best  method  of  attain- 
ing these  ends,  true  happiness,  is  a  matter  of 


142  THE   EGO 

intellectual  growth  :  a  matter  of  greater  recogni- 
tion of  the  Law  of  Attraction  ;  the  law  of  infinite 
union  ;  the  Law  as  expressed  in  greater  and 
more  complex  desires. 

The  renunciation  of  one  individual  to  another 
and  the  folly  of  self-sacrifice,  become  apparent 
when  it  is  seen  that  such  renunciation  and 
sacrifice  rest  on  the  same  foundation  that  all 
our  other  actions  rest  upon.  They  are  per- 
formed for  the  purpose  of  yielding  us  the 
greatest  happiness,  either  here  or  hereafter. 

So  it  happens  that  no  man  can  resign  the 
ego.  Let  him  cover  it  up  as  he  will,  it  is 
always  the  motor  that  moves  him,  and  always 
will  be.  What  is  religion  but  giving  up  some- 
thing in  the  present  in  order  that  we  may 
get  it  in  the  future  with  infinitely  compounded 
interest?  I  am  willing  to  give  the  heathen 
the  twenty  dollars  I  have  saved  for  the  pur- 
chase of  a  new  dress,  if  I  am  convinced  that 
God  is  my  security  and  will  pay  me  back  a 
hundred-fold.  It  appears  to  me  as  a  first- 
class  business  transaction,  and  I  will  risk  "  the 
sacrifice." 

The  mother  love,  that  beautiful  and  tender 
and  holy  feeling,  is  self-love.  The  child  is 
the  object  of  the  mother's  desire ;  probably  the 
very   highest   object   of    her    desire ;    and    she 


THE   EGO  143 

holds  it  more  tenaciously  than  anything 
else. 

Every  form  of  love  rests  on  desire  ;  rests 
on  the  basis  of  self.  Indeed,  every  good  and 
beautiful  attribute  has  self-love  for  its  starting 
point  ;  self-love  worked  out  through  higher 
and  nobler  recognition  of  the  Law  of  Attrac- 
tion, and  individualised  in  higher  and  nobler 
desires. 

The  growth  of  desire  is  the  growth  and 
strengthening  of  the  individual. 

Society,  when  it  shall  have  reached  a  more 
ideal  condition  than  at  present,  will  have 
reached  it  through  the  strengthening  of  the 
individualities  composing  it ;  and  these  in- 
dividualities will  have  become  strengthened 
by  a  better  recognition  of  their  own  selfhood 
as  expressed  in  their  enlarged  desire. 

The  total  sacrifice  of  the  selfish  principle 
as  expressed  in  desire,  if  such  a  thing  were 
possible,  would  mean  the  destruction  of  the 
ego,  which  would  be  annihilation.  And  this 
is  the  impracticable  and  the  impossible  religion 
preached  from  thousands  of  pulpits  to-day, 
whose  effects  are  not  the  making  of  men,  but 
the  prostitution  of  them  to  a  mistaken  renun- 
ciation and  self-deceptive  and  often  a  hypo- 
critical   humility.       Religion  is  based    on    fear. 


144  THE  EGO 

And  I  now  state  boldly  that  everything  in 
this  world  that  is  based  on  fear  must  die.  It 
must  die,  that  man  may  live  and  love  and 
expand  to  the  glory  of  true  and  free  individu- 
alism through  the  power  of  love,  whose  very 
nature  is  incompatible  with  fear. 

The  love  that  is  preached  from  the  pulpit 
is  an  impossible  thing  in  the  character  of  the 
religion  that  preaches  it.     And  why  ? 

Because  the  religion  itself  is  the  most  diluted 
compound  of  weakness  ever  concocted  for  the 
abject  prostration  of  individuality.  It  is  a 
doctrine  that  teaches  men  to  resign  their  own 
strength,  and  to  lean  on  the  strength  of 
another ;  a  doctrine  that  ignores  individual 
power,  and  throws  itself  in  abject  helplessness 
upon  some  imaginary  power  external  to  the 
individual.  In  such  circumstances  the  very 
effort  of  a  person  to  love  his  neighbour  as 
himself  becomes  a  hypocritical  pretence.  He 
is  not  capable  of  generating  love  ;  love  is  the 
child  of  freedom,  and  the  slave  of  fear  is 
powerless  to  beget  it.  No  one  who  is  weak 
in  his  own  selfhood  can  give  himself;  and 
this  is  love.  No  one  who  leans  on  a  power 
outside  of  himself  can  be  anything  but  weak. 

It  is  only  when  men  come  into  a  state  of 
freedom    from    the   ripening   of   the    ego,   that 


THE   EGO  145 

it  becomes  possible  for  them  to  fulfil  the 
claims  of  the  so-called  gospel,  and  love  others 
as  they  love  themselves.  For  love  is  the 
overplus  of  strength,  and  they  who  lean  and 
beg  will  never  be  strong  enough  to  generate 
anything  but  a  counterfeit  representative  of  it. 

Love  is  the  outflow  of  individual  strength ; 
the  outflow  of  the  individual's  very  self;  there 
is  no  outflow  to  individual  weakness ;  nothing 
but  the  absorptive  drying  up  that  we  perceive 
in  stagnant  water. 

The  time  is  fast  approaching  when  men 
will  love ;  and  that,  too,  because  self  is  the 
moving  spring  of  each  person.  When  we  shall 
become  free  from  fear  through  the  growing 
knowledge  of  our  own  power,  we  will  see  in 
others  only  the  qualities  that  attract  us,  and 
we  will  flow  out  to  them  in  desires  for  their 
good.  Beautiful  deeds  will  become  the  spon- 
taneous outgrowth  of  free  souls.  In  an  atmos- 
phere of  freedom,  the  kingdom  of  love  will 
be  established. 

We  would  love  now  if  we  were  free  and 
strong  ;  but  we  are  so  fettered  and  so  weak 
and  so  full  of  fears  for  our  own  safety,  that 
we  cannot  get  away  from  the  clamouring  ego 
within  us  for  an  hour.  We  cannot  come  into 
that  condition  of  noble  and  lofty  repose  which 
K 


146  THE    EGO 

enables  us  to  say,  "  All  things  are  well  at  home. 
I  will,  therefore,  go  abroad  and  see  if  I  cannot 
make  them  better  for  my  neighbours."  This 
would  be  love.  It  would  be  the  superabundant 
outflow  of  strength. 

But  why  should  I  care — being  happy  myself 
— whether  others  are  happy  or  not?  Am  I  not 
under  obedience  to  the  law  of  selfishness?  In 
what  particular  is  this  personal  ego  I  find  within 
myself  to  be  served  by  serving  others  ? 

I  answer  that  in  my  still  farther  recognition 
of  the  Law  of  Attraction  I  have  come  into 
closer  relationship  with  my  neighbour  ;  the 
drawing  power  of  the  Law  has  so  shown  me 
his  oneness  with  me  that  it  has  become  my 
desire  to  help  him ;  my  whole  nature  has  warmed 
towards  him,  because  the  Law  in  its  fuller  mani- 
festation is  Love.  My  more  complete  recogni- 
tion of  the  Law  has  filled  me  with  love,  and 
love  seeks  an  object ;  it  is  the  expression  of  the 
Law  of  Attraction,  and  being  full  of  it,  my 
happiness  is  best  served  by  manifesting  it  in 
noble  words  and  generous  deeds.  And  thus, 
even  in  the  execution  of  man's  loftiest  ideal 
for  the  universal  good,  we  see  that  he  acts  in 
obedience  to  his  self-love ;  the  love  so  mis- 
understood and  so  condemned  by  the  super- 
ficial thought  of  the  acre. 


THE   EGO  147 

The  tendency  of  evolution  is  the  perfecting 
of  individuality  ;  the  concentration  of  power 
in  the  ego.  Man  must  learn  that  he  is  self- 
creative,  and  that  his  only  hope  lies  in  this 
fact ;  that  his  only  salvation  is  knowledge  ; 
that  knowledge  is  a  constantly  growing  power. 

Seeing  this  to  be  so,  let  every  human  being 
take  fresh  hope. 

So  long  as  salvation  is  supposed  to  depend 
on  another,  it  must  always  seems  doubtful  ; 
and  this  doubt  cannot  but  keep  one  more  or 
less  under  the  influence  of  fear. 

But  when  self-salvation  is  seen  to  rest  on 
self-dependence,  on  individual  effort,  then  native 
courage  and  will-power  come  to  the  rescue,  and 
a  man  shoulders  the  burden  of  his  journey,  and 
trudges  along  the  road  of  endless  progres- 
sion with  faith  in  himself  to  overcome  all 
obstacles. 

And  in  this  frame  of  mind  he  grows  stronger 
every  hour,  no  matter  how  rough  the  journey  ; 
the  rougher  the  better,  since  every  conquest 
adds  to  his  strength  until  he  feels  his  position 
to  be  God-like  and  irresistible. 


CHAPTER   XVII 

ENDLESS   PROGRESSION  :    ITS   RETARDATION 

BY    FEAR 

Self-dependence  in  the  pursuit  of  wisdom 
— this  alone  is  growth. 

Whenever  a  man  is  in  a  position  that  entails 
the  necessity  of  leaning  on  some  external  aid, 
he  is  a  dying  man  ;  his  tendency  is  downward  ; 
he  is  under  the  so-called  law  of  gravitation. 
Knock  the  props  from  under  him  ;  then,  if 
he  can  stand  alone,  with  faith  in  his  own 
unaided  self,  and  with  the  resolution  to  follow 
his  highest  aspirations,  indifferent  to  the 
criticisms  of  his  neighbours,  he  has  passed 
the  line  that  lies  between  the  so-called  law 
of  gravitation  and  the  Law  of  Attraction,  and 
has  entered  the  outskirts  of  a  diseaseless  and 
deathless  domain  of  pure  life. 

That  this  is  a  difficult  thing  to  do,  no  one 
can  doubt.  We  look  abroad  and  see  disease 
and  death  everywhere.  They  seem  to  be  the 
established  order  of  nature ;  to  break  away 
from  them  looks  an  impossibility.  We  have 
not  yet  discovered  that  there  is  no  established 

148 


ENDLESS    PROGRESSION  149 

order  in  nature ;  we  cannot  yet  realise  that 
nature  is  an  ever-varying  series  of  conceptions 
of  the  Law,  and  that  disease  and  death  are 
among  these  conceptions. 

That  they  are  mistaken  conceptions,  or  con- 
ceptions based  on  our  ignorance  of  absolute 
truth,  has  not  occurred  to  us.  We  have  not 
yet  found  out  that  all  is  life,  and  that  the 
whole  chain  of  growth,  from  the  lowest  organic 
form,  up  to  man,  is  a  gradually  growing  con- 
sciousness of  this  great  truth ;  this  absolute 
truth  ;  the  most  important  of  the  few  absolute 
truths  we  know  at  this  time. 

The  entire  procession  of  organic  forms,  I 
say  again,  has  been  but  a  series  of  gradually 
enlarging  perceptions  of  the  undeniable  truth 
that  there  is  no  death,  and  can  be  none ;  that 
all  is  life. 

Individual  intelligence,  individual  knowledge 
of  this  one  mighty  truth,  is  positive  salvation 
from  disease  and  death. 

That  disease  and  death  should  be  among 
the  conceptions  of  nature,  is  because  nature 
in  its  conceptions  of  the  truth  is  a  growth.  It 
cannot  conceive  the  full  possibilities  of  the 
Law  of  Attraction  in  a  moment,  any  more  than 
a  peach  can  conceive  the  possibilities  of  its  fully 
ripened  condition  at  the  moment  of  its  inception. 


150  ENDLESS   PROGRESSION 

Let  us  imagine  that  nature  could  be  ab- 
solutely perfect  and  beyond  the  possibility  of 
any  farther  growth  ;  that  man,  as  a  part  of 
nature,  was  also  perfect.  In  this  case,  he  would 
have  nothing  more  to  desire,  and  no  farther 
incentive  either  to  thought  or  action.  Is  there 
anything  desirable  in  such  a  condition  ?  Is 
it  not  the  most  terrible  form  of  death  that 
one  can  imagine?  Dead,  and  yet  conscious 
of  the  situation  ;  dead  and  yet  sufficiently  alive 
to  know  it.  For  my  part,  I  should  prefer  an 
eternal  sleep. 

On  the  other  hand,  look  at  nature  with  man 
at  its  head  as  an  ever-growing  thing.  Look 
at  the  Law  as  expressed  individually  in  desire. 
In  this  condition  there  is  always  a  future  ; 
there  is  always  some  happiness  to  be  attained, 
which,  when  attained,  projects  its  hope  of  some 
other  and  greater  happiness.  There  is  always 
some  obstacle  of  ignorance  to  be  conquered, 
the  conquering  of  which  brings  a  greater 
consciousness  of  strength  and  power  to  him 
who  conquers.  There  is  an  ever  -  enlarging 
object  in  life;  an  ever -enlarging  hope  for 
that  which  lies  beyond;  an  ever -enlarging 
future,  which,  in  passing  behind  us,  strengthens 
our  position  in  the  universe  and  confirms  our 
mastery    more   and    more.      There    is    always 


RETARDATION    BY   FEAR  I  5  I 

something  to  live  for ;  always  an  object  to 
stimulate  effort,  and  always  the  deepening 
and  broadening  and  beautifying  manhood  and 
womanhood  that  is  the  result  of  effort.  There 
is  always  the  closer  approximation  of  our 
external  selves  to  the  glorious  internal  ideal 
born  of  desire,  and  bringing  us  more  and  more 
into  a  position  of  oneness  with  the  Law  of 
Attraction,  thus  uniting  us  in  love  and  har- 
mony and  power. 

And  in  all  of  this  growth,  we  will  eventually 
exhaust  the  latent  powers  of  the  earth,  and 
enter  other  spheres  of  thought  and  action, 
whose  possibilities  will  far  transcend  those  of 
the  earth. 

And  on  and  on,  through  a  never-ending  series 
of  conquests  in  obedience  to  the  ideal,  which 
allures  forever  to  higher  heights  and  to  happier 
happiness,  and  to  tenderer  and  nobler  love. 

There  is  perfection,  but  man  will  never  reach 
it.  It  is  an  infinite  thing  and  belongs  only  to 
the  Law,  the  unchangeable  Principle  of  Life  ; 
the  Eternal  Unit ;  the  One.  Man  is  many  ;  he 
represents  a  million  phases  of  the  Law ;  but 
not  the  all  of  it.  His  happiness  depends  on 
his  finitehood  ;  on  the  absolutely  limitless 
capacity  of  his  power  to  grow. 

The  basis  of  individual  life  is  desire.     Desire 


152  ENDLESS   PROGRESSION 

is  the  Law  incarnate  in  the  individual.  It  is 
the  diseaseless  and  deathless  principle.  This 
fact  shows  that  it  is  of  the  Law,  and  not  of 
the  intelligence,  or  the  recognition  of  the  Law. 
The  desire  exists  whether  it  is  recognised  or 
not.  Indeed,  it  is  very  seldom  that  the  desire 
is  recognised  in  a  man  in  a  way  that  will  make 
it  apparent  in  his  consolidated  intelligence, 
which  is  his  body. 

He  desires  and  he  recognises  that  he  does 
desire,  but  he  does  not  recognise  that  his  desire 
is  a  power  to  be  relied*  upon.  He  desires,  but 
he  fears  to  trust  his  desire  and  trusts  his  fear 
instead ;  thus  giving  the  superior  recognition 
to  his  fear,  and  ignoring  his  desire.  In  ignor- 
ing his  desire,  he  in  a  measure  paralyses  its 
effectiveness  ;  in  recognising  his  fear,  he  makes 
the  fear  paramount  in  his  mind  or  his  intelli- 
gence, and  it  is  the  fear  that  is  recorded  in  his 
intelligence,  and  not  the  perfect  desire.  And 
this  is  why  these  human  intelligences — our 
bodies — are  so  weak  and  wretched  and  diseased, 
and  why  they  die. 

To  fear  is  as  much  a  function  of  the  intellect 
as  to  hope.  To  fear  is  to  believe  something 
that  you  do  not  wish  to  believe.  Every  belief 
is  a  form  of  intelligence  or  ignorance  (the 
two  words  are  off  the  same  piece,  being  nega- 


RETARDATION    BY   FEAR  153 

tive  and  positive  poles  of  truth).  To  believe 
what  you  fear  is  to  make  manifest  a  certain 
state  of  mind  ;  it  is  a  negative  state  of  mind, 
but  this  does  not  prevent  it  from  being  a  belief; 
and  to  believe  anything  whatever  is  to  make 
it  manifest  or  visible  ;  whether  it  is  a  negative 
belief,  by  which  I  mean  a  belief  that  denies 
the  absolute  truth  that  all  is  life,  or  a  positive 
belief  that  affirms  the  infallibility  of  the  Life- 
Principle. 

If  a  man  believes  that  which  he  fears,  his 
belief  is  a  traitor  to  his  desire  ;  it  is  not  at  one 
with  his  desire,  and,  therefore,  it  does  not 
properly  clothe  his  desire  or  make  it  manifest. 

There  is  no  belief  entirely  free  from  the 
recognition  of  the  desire ;  there  must  be  some 
recognition  of  desire  in  every  belief,  or  else  the 
body  of  man's  belief  would  scarcely  cohere 
enough  to  give  him  a  personal  appearance  at 
all.  And  men  do  trust  their  desires  deep  down 
in  their  intuitional  natures  much  more  than 
they  are  usually  aware  of;  from  this  fact,  they 
live  longer  than  would  appear  possible  when  we 
consider  how  very  much  people  seem  to  trust 
their  fears.  Desire  is  so  positive  a  thing  that 
it  commands  a  certain  amount  of  recognition, 
even  though  it  is  unconscious  or  intuitive 
recognition. 


154  ENDLESS   PROGRESSION 

Life,  freedom  from  disease  and  old  age,  de- 
pend entirely  on  the  amount  and  kind  of 
recognition  a  man  gives  to  his  desire.  One 
man  recognises  his  desire  as  something  danger- 
ous to  his  own  salvation  and  to  society,  and 
goes  to  work  to  crush  it.  This  crushing  process 
usually  strengthens  the  desire  and  thereby  the 
individual  ;  but  it  is  apt  to  render  him  an  in- 
harmonious element  in  society,  not  because  his 
desire  is  evil,  but  because  his  mistaken  intelli- 
gence imputes  evil  to  it.  With  this  imputed 
character,  and  with  the  recognition  he  has  given 
his  desire  in  trying  to  crush  it,  he  has  become^ 
a  strong  man  in  a  mistaken  direction. 

For  the  desire  is  the  Principle  of  Life  in  the 
man.  It  points  forever  in  the  direction  of 
happiness  ;  it  is  altogether  good  and  disease- 
less  and  deathless,  without  knowing  this  fact. 
It  is  a  part  of  the  altogether  good  and  disease- 
less  and  deathless  Law,  awaiting  individual 
recognition  in  order  to  become  manifest  or 
visible  on  the  external  (the  mental)  plane,  in 
an  altogether  good  and  diseaseless  and  death- 
less individual  existence. 

When  a  man — in  order  to  attain  some  form 
of  that  happiness  toward  which  his  desire  is 
always  pointing — makes  the  mistake  of  injuring 
another,  it  is  not  his  desire  that  has  erred,  but 


RETARDATION    BY   FEAR  155 

his  intelligence.  His  desire  never  points  toward 
the  injury  of  another  ;  it  cannot  possibly  do  so  ; 
it  is  a  portion  of  the  eternal  unity,  an  intelligent 
recognition  of  which  leads  to  a  condition  of 
unbroken  harmony,  undying  brotherhood,  and 
ever-enlarging  love. 

The  intelligence — which  is  the  individualising 
factor — does  little  else  thus  far  in  its  growth 
than  make  mistakes,  as  it  gropes  blindly  in  the 
direction  of  the  absolute  truth  that  there  is  no 
death  ;  that  all  is  life. 

The  truth  that  all  is  life  comes  only  with  a 
recognition  of  the  Law  of  Attraction.  Ever 
since  the  first  tiny  creature,  and  before,  the 
trend  of  ages  has  been  towards  the  knowing  of 
this  truth.     And  now  we  know  it. 

To  know  it  is  to  be  conjoined  to  it  in  its 
diseaselessness  and  deathlessness.  To  know 
it  is  to  be  one  with  it.  To  know  that  it  is 
diseaseless  and  deathless  is  to  know  that  it  is 
also  sinless  ;  it  is  to  know  that  the  so-called 
sins  of  the  race  have  been  like  the  so-called 
diseases,  nothing  more  than  the  mistaken  beliefs 
of  a  baby  race,  following  the  dim  and  murky 
lights  its  half-awakened  intelligence  yielded 
it,  in  the  direction  it  thought  would  lead  to 
happiness. 

No  man  desires  to  be  a  criminal.     All  men 


156  ENDLESS   PROGRESSION 

desire  happiness.  It  is  the  mistaken  efforts  to 
gratify  a  desire  than  can  be  nothing  else  but 
holy,  that  create  the  mistaken  appearance  of 
sin  in  the  world,  and  fill  it  with  poor,  benighted 
blunderers  whom  we  call  sinners. 

Until  the  growth  of  intelligence  in  the  race 
shall  demonstrate  this  to  be  true,  society  can 
do  no  better  than  protect  itself  from  the  con- 
sequences of  these  mistakes  and  their  mistaken 
perpetrators,  as  it  is  now  doing.  But  a  time 
is  coming  when  a  true  knowledge  on  this 
subject  will  convert  our  state  prisons  into 
colleges,  where  the  truth  will  be  taught. 

More  and  more  the  power  we  have  ascribed 
to  "  God  " — the  Law — seems  to  be  centring 
in  the  individual.  It  is  evolving  through  the 
individual's  organisation  and  is  being  expressed 
by  him  ;  and  in  proportion  as  it  is  so  under- 
stood and  expressed,  man  trusts  his  fears  less 
and  his  desires  more. 

Man's  organism  is  the  intellectual  laboratory 
for  the  expression  or  the  making  visible  and 
available  the  power  of  the  Law  of  Attraction  in 
our  world  of  uses. 

The  power  exists ;  the  Law  exists ;  but  it 
might  as  well  not  exist  as  to  find  in  external 
life  no  recognition  of  it.  "  Man  is  God's  neces- 
sity."     The  law  is  simply  the  invisible  frame- 


RETARDATION    BY   FEAR  I  57 

work  upon  which  man  strings  the  wonderful 
creations  of  his  genius  ;  it  is  the  infinite  breath 
of  life  that  flows  into  his  every  thought,  and 
makes  his  thoughts  external,  visible  existences. 

It  is  true  that  without  the  Law,  man  could 
not  be ;  but  it  is  also  true  that  without  man  to 
interpret  the  Law,  and  so  make  it  manifest 
externally,  the  Law  might  as  well  not  be. 

The  belief  that  the  invisible  is  more  important 
than  the  visible  is  a  mistake.  The  belief  that 
individual  life,  as  it  refines  and  spiritualises, 
becomes  less  allied  to  the  visible  plane  and 
more  allied  to  the  invisible  plane,  is  another 
mistake. 

Individual  life  as  it  refines  and  spiritualises 
will  attain  a  stability  and  a  fixedness,  a  power 
of  cohesion  and  concentration  on  the  visible 
plane,  infinitely  greater  than  it  now  possesses. 
It  will  be  as  much  more  solid  than  it  is  now, 
as  steel  is  more  solid  than  water  ;  it  will  become 
as  much  more  delicate  and  compact  as  alabaster 
is  more  delicate  and  compact  than  sand.  The 
refining  principle  that  comes  through  the 
growth  of  a  superior  intelligence  will  not  dis- 
integrate individuals,  or  cause  them  to  dis- 
appear from  the  external  world.  Intellectual 
growth  is  the  constant  replacement  of  a  low 
grade  of  thought  by  a  higher  grade  of  thought ; 


158  ENDLESS    PROGRESSION 

it  is  the  constant  acquisition  of  new  truth. 
New  truth  relegates  to  the  past  every  particle 
of  old  truth,  which  in  the  light  of  the  new  truth, 
has  become  error,  and,  therefore,  useless. 

Every  atom  of  this  truth,  new  and  old,  is 
substance  ;  the  identical  stuff  our  bodies  and 
everything  else  we  see  are  made  of;  and  it 
changes  constantly.  If  we  keep  on  learning 
new  truths,  the  substance  of  our  bodies  refines  ; 
grows  stronger  and  more  beautiful.  If  we 
cease  to  learn,  this  substance  dries  up  and 
falls  to  the  earth  under  obedience  to  the  nega- 
tive pole  of  the  Law  of  Attraction,  which  says, 
"  The  dead  to  the  dead." 

Jesus  understood  this  and  said,  "  Let  the 
dead  bury  their  dead."  The  dead  are  bury- 
ing their  dead  to-day  all  over  the  world. 
But  the  life  of  a  nobler  intelligence  has 
appeared,  and  death  itself  is  dying. 


CHAPTER   XVIII 

man's  power  to  speak  the  creative  WORD  : 

EVOLUTION    OF   THE   IDEAL 

THE  visible  universe  is  the  universe  of  uses, 
and  man's  theatre  of  ever- progressive  action. 
To  pull  out  of  his  own  brain,  as  the  spider 
pulls  out  of  its  body,  an  unending  web  of 
creations ;  creations  that  suggest  other  crea- 
tions in  a  never-ending  procession  of  higher 
and  still  higher  and  more  potent  uses — this 
is  man's  privilege  and  his  destiny. 

At  a  certain  point  in  the  acquisition  of 
intelligence,  a  man  arrives  at  a  wonderful 
fact ;  he  perceives  that  he  is  personally  crea- 
tive ;  sees  that  his  spoken  word  has  the 
power  of  life  in  it  ;  that  it  heals  the  sick, 
banishes  old  age  and  drives  death  away. 

He  does  this  through  the  power  of  the 
Law  made  personal. 

That  man  should  be  able  to  make  the  power 
of  the  Law  personal  in  himself  is  so  wonderful 
a  truth  that  the  world  is  not  going  to  accept 
it  until  it  sees  it  demonstrated.  But  even  now 
the  fact  is  being  demonstrated  in  sufficient  force 
i59 


160  man's  power  to  speak 

to  prove  to  the  unprejudiced  observer  that  the 
statement  I  have  made  is  true. 

The  people,  as  a  whole,  are  not  looking  for 
anything  out  of  the  common  occurrences  of  life  ; 
their  preachers  and  their  teachers,  their  body 
tinkers  and  their  soul  tinkers,  are  on  top  of 
them,  and  are  holding  them  down  with  a  weight 
as  of  mountains.  When  one  poor,  struggling 
creature  gets  from  under,  and  begins  to  breathe 
the  pure  air  of  higher  intelligence,  he  distrusts 
it  because  of  its  very  purity.  He  is  afraid  of 
it ;  its  grandeur  terrorises  him  ;  he  is  tempted 
to  crawl  back  to  his  old  stifling  position  in  order 
to  obtain  again  that  mental  stupor  he  is  fain 
to  call  "  his  peace  of  mind." 

The  rapidly  enlarging  thoughts  that  spring 
from  his  liberated  brain  can  find  no  soil  for 
their  germination ;  as  far  as  his  vision  can 
reach,  he  sees  but  an  arid  desert  waste,  in- 
capable of  responding  to  his  mental  touch. ' 
He  grows  hopeless  ;  the  belief  in  himself  and 
his  own  ideas,  that  would  make  them  manifest 
in  external  form  in  spite  of  the  most  unfavour- 
able conditions,  is  wanting ;  the  disregardful 
world  drifts  over  his  genius  and  he  is  lost. 

Belief  is  the  clothing  power  of  which  desire 
is  the  spirit  or  soul. 

Belief  is    the  fruit  of  intelligence.      A   man 


THE   CREATIVE   WORD  l6l 

believes  what  his  intelligence  shows  him  to  be 
true.  His  belief  is  his  fixed  perception  of 
certain  facts.  As  his  perception  of  facts 
changes,  his  belief  changes. 

No  one  doubts  this  ;  but  when  I  say  that 
his  body  is  a  faithful  record  of  his  beliefs, 
and  shows  forth  every  change  of  his  percep- 
tions, very  few  people  will  believe  it ;  and 
yet  it  is  true. 

Beliefs  with  slight  variations  run  in  grooves 
that  produce  established  types.  Cattle  repre- 
sent a  certain  set  of  beliefs,  and  we  have 
their  type.  Horses  represent  a  set  of  beliefs, 
differing  somewhat  from  those  of  cattle,  and 
we  have  another  type.  Man  represents  another 
set  of  beliefs — a  more  intelligent  set  of  beliefs — 
and  they  are  faithfully  registered  in  his  higher 
organisation. 

There  has  been  very  little  change  in  man's 
beliefs  for  ages.  In  all  important  particulars, 
he  believes  substantially  what  he  believed  thou- 
sands of  years  ago.  He  represents  the  inherited 
beliefs  of  many  generations.  His  beliefs  have 
been  somewhat  changed  in  a  few  particulars, 
but  the  body  of  his  .beliefs  is  the  same.  He 
believes  himself  to  be  a  limited  creature ;  he 
believes  that  God  made  him  in  His  own  image 
and  that  God  holds  his  destiny  in  His  hand. 
L 


1 62  man's  power  to  speak 

He  leans  on  God  or  on  some  other  imaginary 
power ;  and  it  is  his  disbelief  in  himself  as 
his  own  maker  and  the  master  of  his  own 
destiny,  that  keeps  him  from  farther  marked 
and  substantial  advancement  in  his  beliefs. 

His  intellect  is  locked  up  within  a  limit  of 
his  own  making,  and  though  he  is  slowly 
widening  this  limit  in  spots,  he  is  contracting 
it  in  other  spots,  and  his  average  growth  out 
of  his  fetters  is  very  slow. 

The  belief  lying  at  the  root  of  all  his 
hampering  beliefs  is  a  belief  in  the  deadness 
of  the  matter  out  of  which  he  thinks  his  body 
is  made.  He  carries  the  body  of  death  with 
him  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave.  In  spite 
of  his  ever-present  intuition  that  death  is  not 
for  him,  he  admits  its  existence  in  his  external 
senses,  and  he  takes  the  consequences  of  the 
admission,  and  dies. 

The  few  years  of  his  life  are  insufficient  for 
anything  more  than  the  round  of  ideas  pursued 
by  his  father ;  and  so  he  dies  without  having 
found  any  new  line  of  thought  by  which  to 
change  his  fixed  beliefs.  And  thus,  with  human 
belief  in  a  state  of  stagnation,  the  race  itself 
is  stagnant.  It  cannot  improve  in  any  de- 
cidedly marked  manner. 

The    idea    that    the    race    has    reached    its 


THE   CREATIVE   WORD  1 63 

ultimate  development  is  one  of  the  most 
absurd  of  all  its  ideas.  It  may  be  that  the 
human  form  has  become  a  crude  expression 
of  the  shape  best  adapted  to  the  highest  use ; 
and,  in  that  case,  there  will  be  no  higher  race 
of  animal  creatures  than  man.  But  if  this  is 
so,  and  I  believe  it  is,  then  the  improvement 
to  be  made  in  him  by  a  constantly  growing 
belief  in  his  own  unlimited  power  will  show 
forth — not  in  any  marked  change  in  his  bodily 
structure — but  in  an  ever-strengthening,  refining 
and  beautifying  process  of  his  present  structure. 
A  man  can  be  just  what  he  believes  he  can  be, 
after  he  understands  the  Law.  He  can  do  just 
what  he  believes  he  can  do,  after  he  has  come 
into  the  understanding  of  being. 

Therefore,  personal  power  is  simply  a  matter 
of  the  understanding  of  truth  ;  simply  a  course 
of  mental  training  in  the  right  direction  ;  the 
direction  towards  freedom  from  every  one  of 
his  old  hampering  beliefs  in  his  own  limitation, 
and  a  consequent  emancipation  from  every 
description  of  fear. 

All  power  is  in  the  knowing.  By  the  word 
power,  I  do  not  mean  some  abstract,  far-away 
force,  but  a  present  personal  power ;  a  power 
vested  in  the  individual  himself;  the  power  to 
be  precisely  what   he  wants  to  be,  and  to  do 


164  man's  power  to  speak 

precisely  what  he  wants  to  do.  A  man  has  no 
limitations  but  those  imposed  by  his  ignorance 
of  his  power. 

This  is  because  the  external  of  man  is  belief. 
What  he  believes,  even  in  his  ignorance  of  the 
Law — he  is.  When  he  shall  come  into  an 
understanding  of  the  Law,  and  know  that  it 
does  not  circumscribe  him  in  any  direction 
whatever,  he  can  then  consult  his  desires  as  to 
what  he  desires  to  become,  and,  recognising 
that  the  Law  does  not  stand  in  the  way  of  his 
becoming  what  he  desires  to  be,  he  slowly 
begins  to  grow  into  it.  He  speaks  the  word 
of  bis  own  renewed  creation.  He  begins  slowly 
to  grow  into  the  new  form  of  life  projected  by 
his  ideal. 

I  say  "  slowly,"  because  at  first  this  complete 
change  of  belief  is  very  slow  indeed.  At  every 
step  of  his  progress  in  it,  he  is  met  by  the  solid 
wall  of  his  previous  beliefs,  which  have  been 
compacted  in  him  by  a  thousand  generations 
of  ancestors.  He  not  only  meets  this  solid 
wall  in  himself,  but  he  can  scarcely  take  a  step 
outside  of  himself  without  meeting  it  in  a  still 
more  unyielding  form  from  those  in  whom  it 
has  never  been  shaken  at  all,  and  who  turn 
upon  him  like  enraged  beasts  when  they  begin 
to    feel  the  change  that  is    going   on    in    him. 


THE   CREATIVE   WORD  165 

Truly,  he  who  would  step  up  to  a  higher  plane 
in  life  must  be  brave,  as  well  as  faithful  to  the 
best  he  knows. 

And  yet,  to  one  who  is  thoroughly  tired  of 
the  world  as  it  is — tired  of  its  mediocre  attain- 
ments, tired  of  the  entire  range  of  its  cheap  and 
wretched  thought — any  change,  however  diffi- 
cult, seems  a  relief.  The  energies  are  stimulated 
by  it ;  and  under  the  stimulus  greater  hopes 
are  born  and  greater  courage  to  insure  their 
ripening. 

Anything  more  dismal  than  the  eternal  round 
of  small  events  that  swarm  our  pathway  from 
the  cradle  to  the  grave,  to  be  repeated  in  each 
successive  generation,  I  cannot  imagine.  No 
wonder  if  death  should  be  welcomed  by  the 
weary  pilgrim  after  his  third  or  fourth  journey 
over  this  arid  and  unchanging  scene.  If  a 
continued  existence  has  nothing  better  to  hold 
out  to  us  as  an  inducement  to  our  prolonged 
lives  here,  I  want  nothing  of  it. 

The  same  thing  over  and  over  and  over  for 
thousands  of  years — this  has  been  the  history 
of  the  race.  A  generation  is  born  ;  it  drags 
through  untold  hardships,  gives  birth  to  another 
generation,  and  dies. 

And,  in  the  circumstances,  it  ought  to  be 
glad  to  die.     It  has  no  incentive  to  live.     More- 


166  man's  tower  to  speak 

over,  there  is  no  reason  why  it  should  live  ;  its 
only  use,  so  far  as  its  growth  has  carried  it,  is 
to  propagate  its  kind  in  order  that  the  highest 
form  of  life  on  our  globe  shall  not  become 
extinct  until  the  knowledge  of  self-salvation, 
through  a  continued  growth,  unbroken  by 
death,  should  come  to  it. 

The  possibility  of  this  unbroken  line  of 
growth  in  the  individuals  of  the  race  has  been 
the  ever-alluring,  though  never-defined  hope,  by 
which  it  was  possible  for  the  generations  to 
repeat  .themselves,  until  such  time  as  human 
intelligence  had  come  to  that  point  of  develop- 
ment where  it  could  grasp  the  idea  of  perpetual 
and  undying  growth,  and  hold  fast  to  it  until  it 
became  fixed  in  these  forms  of  personal  beliefs, 
which  we  call  our  bodies. 

Indeed,  evolution,  in  its  whole  course,  has 
flowed  steadily  up  to  this  one  hope  ;  or,  rather, 
because  self-perpetuation  was  an  ultimate  pos- 
sibility, all  life  has  ascended  the  scale  in  one 
unbroken  stream  of  higher,  and  still  higher, 
forms  towards  its  actualisation. 

To  believe  it  possible  to  live  forever  in  con- 
stant progression  towards  more  refined  and 
more  powerful  conditions,  is  the  beginning  of 
growth  towards  these  conditions.  This  belief 
is  the  seed  germ  in  the  primordial  life-cell ;  it 


THE   CREATIVE   WORD  167 

has  developed  in  us  on  the  unconscious  plane  ; 
that  is,  without  any  help  from  our  reasoning 
powers,  until  the  present  time. 

The  development  of  this  seed  germ  can  only 
go  a  certain  distance  on  the  unconscious  plane. 
The  time  comes  when  unconscious  growth — 
having  ripened  an  intellect  of  sufficient  power — 
demands  the  co-operation  of  that  intellect ;  or 
at  least,  the  recognition  of  its  still  latent  possi- 
bilities by  that  intellect ;  or  it  develops  no 
farther.  This  is  the  period  when  a  transition 
from  unconscious  to  conscious  life  begins  ;  in 
other  words,  it  is  a  transition  from  the  plane 
wherein  life  lived  us,  to  the  higher  plane  where 
we  begin  to  live  ourselves,  or  to  do  our  own 
living  by  our  own  knowledge  of  how  to  do  it. 

The  unconscious  plane  of  life  is  that  plane  in 
which  we  recognise  the  Law  without  knowing 
what  it  is,  and  without  giving  it  any  special 
thought.  We  simply  recognise  it  as  we  make 
it  manifest  through  use.  We  perform  all  the 
uses  of  life  because  life  is  in  us  ;  but  our 
intelligences  take  no  thought  about  it  in  any 
way  that  can  lead  to  practical  results.  We 
know  we  live,  and  that  is  about  all  we  do 
know. 

When  unconscious  life,  as  expressed  in  uses, 
begins  to  become  conscious  life,  it  shows  forth 


1 68  man's  power  to  speak 

in  a  strange  and  heretofore  unknown  awakening 
of  the  intelligence  ;  which,  as  it  proceeds,  lifts 
life  from  its  unconscious  plane,  its  plane  of  uses, 
to  a  plane  of  conscious  power  in  its  own  ability 
to  express  itself  in  logical  statements  of  itself, 
and  free  from  compulsory  expression  in  those 
uses,  which,  previously,  had  been  its  only  mode 
of  expression. 

It  is  emancipated  from  the  position  of 
drudgery  that  was  the  natural  result  of  its 
ignorance  of  its  own  ability  and  power,  into  a 
position  of  mastery,  when  its  own  logical  state- 
ment of  truth,  as  it  has  learned  it  by  self-intro- 
spection, establishes  its  station  in  the  world. 

For  instance,  the  man  reasons  this  way :  He 
says,  "  I  have  got  an  understanding  of  the 
power  vested  in  the  Law  of  Being  ;  or  at  least 
an  understanding  of  enough  of  that  power  to 
know  that  nothing  can  circumscribe  it.  This 
for  the  first  part.  For  the  second  part,  I  per- 
ceive that  desire  is  the  individualised  expression 
of  the  Law ;  and  that  desire  is  made  manifest 
or  visible  in  the  external  world  by  belief.  I 
have  believed  in  the  power  of  the  Law  uncon- 
sciously, and  that  belief  has  manifested  itself  in 
all  the  organs  of  my  body,  and  in  the  senses  that 
relate  me  as  an  individual  to  the  world  of  uses. 
Having  realised  its  power  even  before  I  learned 


THE   CREATIVE   WORD  169 

to  observe  it  and  reason  on  it  intellectually,  now, 
at  this  time,  when  I  do  observe  it  and  reason 
upon  it  intellectually,  I  am  beginning  to  be 
amazed  at  my  own  stupidity,  and  the  stupidity 
of  the  race,  that  so  little  should  be  understood 
about  it, 

"  For  if  an  unconscious  or  dumb  and  blind 
belief  should  have  brought  me  up  to  my  present 
standpoint  in  creation,  what  will  not  a  conscious 
or  intelligent  belief  do  for  me  ;  a  belief,  that, 
knowing  something  of  the  Law,  can  co-operate 
with  the  Law  in  its  manifestation  in  my  body?" 

If  the  Law  can  manifest  through  blind  belief, 
as  it  does  do,  how  much  more  powerfully  can  it 
manifest  through  the  intelligent  belief  that  meets 
its  every  manifestation  with  a  ready  understand- 
ing of  its  meaning  ? 

The  action  of  the  law  is  correlated  to  the 
action  of  the  intelligence ;  the  greater  the 
activity  of  the  intelligence,  the  greater  the 
activity  of  the  Law  in  manifesting.  So  long 
as  the  power  of  the  law  to  manifest  was  con- 
fined to  the  dumb  intelligence  of  the  body,  an 
intelligence  that  reciprocated  only  in  added 
functions  to  the  body,  it  continued  to  build  the 
body  until  the  body  needed  no  more  of  those 
functions  that  expressed  life  only  in  uses.  It 
had  reached   a   shape   of  such  proportions  as, 


I/O  MAN  S   POWER   TO   SPEAK 

perhaps,  best  fitted  it  for  its  journey  through 
eternity. 

But  suppose  the  Law  could — at  this  stage  of 
man's  development — simply  hold  the  man  in 
existence,  without  any  farther  attempt  at  the 
recognition  of  truth  on  his  part,  what  object 
would  be  served  in  the  economy  of  human 
development  ? 

None  at  all. 

We  should  have  a  race  stagnant  at  the  com- 
pletion of  its  animal  life  ;  a  race  not  able  to 
go  alone  in  its  own  growing  strength,  and  not 
worth  carrying  because  of  its  helplessness,  its 
disease  and  deformity  and  brutality.  Such  a 
condition  would  furnish  us  with  a  spectacle  of 
arrested  growth  on  so  huge  a  scale,  as  to  be 
beyond  comparison  with  anything  of  the  kind 
ever  witnessed  in  the  universe. 

But  this  is  precisely  the  spectacle  we  have 
been  looking  upon  for  thousands  of  years  here 
on  this  planet.     What  does  it  mean  ? 

It  means  that  the  Law  reciprocates  our 
unconscious  recognition  up  to  a  certain  point 
only,  and  never  goes  beyond  that  point.  It 
reaches  that  point  with  each  generation. 
Each  generation  then  falls  away  from  this 
unconscious  recognition  ;  it  dies,  and  another 
generation    follows    in    its    footsteps,    to   again 


THE   CREATIVE   WORD  171 

cease  its  unconscious  recognition  of  the  Law, 
and  die. 

And  what  cares  the  Law?  The  Law  is 
unheeding.  The  Law  bends  to  no  one's  cries 
or  prayers.  It  is  not  generous ;  it  has  no 
moral  quality ;  it  is  simply  the  Principle  of 
Attraction  ;  the  attractive  and  cohesive  power 
of  the  universe.  It  is  unchanging;  it  simply 
IS.  "Men  may  come  and  men  may  go,"  but 
it  exists  forever. 

But  in  all  these  wretched  rounds  of  the 
ripening  generations,  the  upper  brain  has  been 
building  ;  the  brain  that  begins  to  realise  and 
trust  and  believe  in  the  ideal.  And  what 
has  the  ideal  promised  ?  It  has  promised  us 
happiness ;  and  happiness  means  freedom  in 
its  best  sense  ;  freedom  from  the  bonds  that 
have  been  festering  more  and  more  in  our 
worn  senses  as  the  ideal  brain  grew ;  freedom 
from  all  our  past  conditions.  "Conditions" 
is  a  word  that,  being  interpreted  by  the  new 
meaning  which  the  advancing  truth  has  placed 
upon  it,  is  synonymous  with  "  beliefs."  For, 
if  a  man  is  all  mind,  as  to  his  personality, 
then  his  conditions  are  his  beliefs,  and  his 
beliefs  are  his  conditions. 

And  so  the  ideal  brain  is  promising  us 
relief  from  the  old  beliefs,  that   have   held   u 


172  MAX'S   rOWER   TO   SPEAK 

so  long  in  the  ruts  of  dead  but  unburicd 
thought.  It  is  not  only  furnishing  us  with 
new  hopes,  but  it  is  showing  us  the  feasibility 
of  trusting  these  hopes  to  their  utmost ;  and 
trusting  them,  they  will  lift  us  away  from 
the  broken  generations  that  are  the  result  of 
our  unconscious  recognition  of  the  Law,  into 
the  one  unbroken  generation  that  will  begin 
as  soon  as  we  yield  to  the  leadings  of  the 
ideal,  and  place  our  trust  upon  the  infinite 
possibilities  latent  in  the  Law  ;  possibilities 
we  have  never  yet  prospected  for. 

It  is  the  growing  brain,  the  development 
of  the  ideal  faculties,  that  gives  us  power  at 
this  time  to  perceive  more  of  the  power  latent 
in  the  Law  than  we  have  ever  before  seen. 
And  as  it  is  a  fact  that — the  body  being  all 
mind — the  more  we  see  of  the  power  of  the 
Law,  the  more  that  power  becomes  incarnate 
in  us ;  it,  therefore,  follows  that  the  race  is 
going  to  accomplish  the  effort  of  centuries, 
and  cross  the  line  between  its  unconscious 
life  of  the  past,  and  enter  a  condition  of  con- 
scious life  for  the  future. 

The  ideal  faculty  in  its  development  makes 
our  desires  seem  plausible  and  possible  of 
realisation.  No  inferior  faculty  of  the  brain 
has   ever   done    this,   or   ever   can   do  it.     The 


THE   CREATIVE   WORD  1 73 

ideal  has  not  only  opened  the  external  world  up 
before  us,  and  given  us  new  incentives  to  life 
and  effort,  but  it  has  opened  new  departments 
in  the  body  that  correlate  the  external ;  that 
are  adapted  to  the  external,  and  that — under 
the  Law  of  Attraction  —  will  unite  with  the 
external  in  a  new  growth,  and  a  nobler 
growth  than  the  race  has  yet  had. 

There  is  no  doubt  at  all  that  it  has  been 
exclusively  by  the  race's  growing  recognition 
of  desire,  that  the  ideal  faculties  have  been 
built.  The  ideal  brain  is  the  new  laboratory 
which  desire  has  formed  for  the  expression 
of  its  own  peculiar  characteristics.  Desire 
has  formed  it  in  order  to  make  itself  visible 
and  audible  in  the  world  of  effects.  Desire, 
as  a  latent  and  greatly  ignored  function, 
desired  to  be  recognised  by  the  individual 
in  whose  economy  it  played  so  important  a 
part  ;  and  in  order  to  do  this,  it  had  to  build 
a  laboratory  in  the  human  brain  for  the  ex- 
pression of  itself.  And  so  we  have  the  faculty 
of  ideality.  And  it  is  the  growth  of  this 
faculty  that  is  now  pledged  to  lift  us  to  a 
recognition  of  the  vast  importance  of  the  Law 
of  Attraction  within  us  as  expressed  in  desire. 

It  is  teaching  us  even  now,  in  spite  of  the 
contempt  heaped  on  our  desires  by  generations 


174  man's  power  to  speak 

of  theologians,  to  respect  desire  in  ourselves 
and  others.  It  is  teaching  a  few  of  us  to 
stand  by  our  desires,  and  uphold  them  as  we 
would  stand  by  and  uphold  our  own  lives ; 
for  we  know  that  desire  is  the  Life-Principle 
within  us,  and  that  it  is  death  to  ignore  it. 

In  speaking  of  desire,  the  Life-Principle  in 
man,  it  seems  unnecessary  to  guard  it  against 
the  misapprehension  that  has  always  clouded 
it  in  public  opinion.  Public  opinion  is  a  very 
shallow  stream  ;  and  no  defence  that  I  can 
make  of  a  word  which  has  lain  so  long  under 
the  drifts  of  theological  rubbish  will  be  under- 
stood. To  the  thinkers,  I  have  only  to  repeat 
what  I  said  once  before  in  these  pages  ;  that 
desire  is  the  implanted  Life-Principle,  without 
which  no  plant  or  animal,  no  organic  form, 
could  ever  move  at  all  ;  indeed,  there  could 
be  no  organic  form  ;  for  the  principle  of 
cohesion  would  not  be  expressed  in  individuals 
were  it  not  for  desire.  Desire  points  always 
in  one  direction  ;  the  direction  of  happiness. 

That  the  individual  makes  most  grievous 
mistakes  in  seeking  the  happiness  towards 
which  desire  always  points,  is  because  the 
individual  in  his  external  life  is  a  mental 
creature,  whose  only  chance  to  grow  is  by 
projecting    experimental     efforts     here,    there, 


THE   CREATIVE   WORD  175 

and  everywhere ;  and  by  the  results  of  these 
experiments  he  judges  for  himself  whether  he 
is  right  or  wrong.  In  this  way  he  has  built 
himself  from  the  smallest  possible  life,  up  to 
the  most  powerful  life  on  our  globe.  And  in 
the  same  way  he  will  go  on  building  himself 
until  experience  shall  teach  him  that  his  highest 
happiness  hangs  on  the  great  moral  law  laid 
down  by  Jesus :  "  Whatsoever  ye  would  that 
others  should  do  unto  you,  do  ye  also  unto 
them." 

In  believing  in  my  desires,  I  believe  in  the 
Law  of  Attraction  in  my  body.  The  Law  of 
Attraction  is  the  power  that  holds  the  atoms  of 
my  body  in  cohesion.  In  our  unconscious  life, 
the  Law  acts  without  our  knowing  it ;  it  holds 
the  atoms  of  our  bodies  compact  until  we  reach 
the  point  of  our  highest  development,  or  until 
we  are  grown.  Then,  if  our  conscious  knowledge 
of  its  power  could  join  on  to  our  unconscious 
knowledge  of  it,  the  power  would  still  operate 
to  hold  the  atoms  in  such  close  relation  to  each 
other  that  we  would  not  grow  any  older. 

But  when  we  fail  to  recognise  the  Law  in  our 
bodies  as  expressed  in  desire,  then  at  the  point 
when  the  unconscious  life  drops  us,  we  begin  to 
grow  old.  The  growing  old  process  is  simply  a 
process  of  disintegration  or  falling  apart  of  the 


176  MAN'S  power  to  speak 

atoms,  because  we  do  not  begin  the  process  of 
conscious  recognition,  and  the  power  vested  in 
unconscious  recognition  begins  to  fail.  We  are 
then  in  a  condition  of  negation,  wherein  the 
atoms  or  cells  lose  their  magnetic  relation  to 
each  other  more  and  more.  As  this  goes  on,  the 
different  organs  of  the  body  become  deadened 
to  each  other's  magnetisms,  and  become  slack 
in  their  action,  until  the  whole  system  gets  to  be 
like  an  old  machine,  whose  wheels  have  worn 
smaller  and  smoother  until  the  cogs  do  not  act 
in  a  way  to  move  all  its  parts  harmoniously. 
This  is  the  condition  we  call  old  age. 

A  similar  condition  may  exist  in  youth. 
There  may  be  a  non-recognition  of  the  Law 
of  Attraction  on  the  unconscious  plane  of  a 
child  ;  and  the  child  may  express  the  condition 
in  many  forms  of  error  called  disease.  And 
every  form  of  it  is  non-recognition,  either  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously,  of  the  Law  of  Attrac- 
tion in  the  individual  as  expressed  in  desire. 

A  sick  person  may  have  a  hundred  desires, 
and  the  desire  to  live,  more  than  all  others  ;  but 
even  having  the  desire  in  its  greatest  develop- 
ment, he  does  not  trust  it ;  and  it  is  powerless 
to  save  him. 

He  must  not  only  be  conscious  of  his  desire, 
but   he    must    know   that    desire  is  the  saving 


THE   CREATIVE   WORD  1 77 

power,  and  that  to  trust  it  fully,  to  believe  in 
it  as  a  saving  power,  is  to  be  saved.  This  is 
what  the  Bible  means  when  it  speaks  of  the 
saving  power  of  God,  and  of  how  God  will 
save  to  the  uttermost  all  who  trust  in  Him. 
The  old  prophets  and  teachers  of  that  long 
past  age,  when  the  Bible  was  written,  had  an 
inkling  of  the  truth  of  this  matter.  For  their 
God  is  the  Law ;  it  is  expressed  in  man  in 
desire ;  and  when  comprehended  and  trusted, 
the  result  is  absolute  and  indestructible  and 
ever-refining  and  progressive  life. 

By  the  understanding  of  his  own  power  as 
related  to  the  Law  of  Being,  a  man's  spoken 
word  will  recreate  him. 


M 


CHAPTER  XIX 

HEALTH  AND  STRENGTH  AND  BEAUTY  AND 
OPULENCE  ARE  TO  BE  FOUND  IN  GREATER 
FULNESS  IN  THIS  NEW  AND  WONDERFUL 
THOUGHT  THAN  IN  ANYTHING  ELSE  IN 
THE  WHOLE  WORLD 

From  the  mental  standpoint,  disease  is  error  ; 
it  cannot  consistently  be  called  anything  else. 

If  all  is  life,  as  it  surely  is  in  absolute  truth  ; 
and  if  man  is  an  individualised  understanding 
of  the  life,  then  he  may  be  said  to  be  a  mental 
statement  of  the  Law  ;  and  a  statement  which 
he  himself  has  made.  Not  knowing  the  absolute 
truth  that  all  is  life  ;  knowing,  indeed,  nothing 
of  the  Law  ;  not  being  able  to  give  anything 
like  a  reasonable  account  of  himself;  simply 
feeling  that  he  lives  —  it  cannot  be  otherwise 
than  that  his  statement  of  being  should  be 
extremely  weak,  and  full  of  errors. 

Errors  of  intelligence  are  simply  negations 
or  denials  of  the  Law,  through  ignorance  of 
its  existence.  These  negations  or  denials  of 
absolute  truth  show  forth  in  a  hundred  forms 
of  weak  and  erroneous  beliefs.     The  body  being 

178 


HEALTH,   STRENGTH  1/9 

mind,  fixed  beliefs,  no  matter  how  erroneous, 
are  recorded  in  it  in  the  degree  and  character 
of  its  weakness. 

Everybody  was  ignorant  of  the  Law.  No 
two  persons  were  ignorant  precisely  in  the 
same  way  and  to  the  same  extent.  So  these 
various  shades  and  grades  of  ignorance  were 
so  many  different  erroneous  statements.  These 
beliefs  were  predicated  upon  a  fixed  conviction 
in  the  perishability  of  matter.  Beliefs  based 
upon  the  accepted  idea  that  matter  is  perish- 
able could  not  do  otherwise  than  result  in 
death  sooner  or  later. 

The  race  takes  the  consequences  of  its  beliefs  ; 
a  thing  it  could  not  do  but  for  the  fact  that  it  is 
all  mind,  and  that  every  man's  body  is  a  state- 
ment of  his  beliefs,  either  acquired  by  himself 
or  inherited  from  his  parents,  or  both  ;  modified 
in  nearly  all  instances  by  the  beliefs  of  those 
about  him. 

For,  until  a  man  has  learned  to  think  himself 
out  of  the  fixed  beliefs  of  the  race,  by  the  re- 
cognition of  his  own  freedom  through  a  know- 
ledge of  the  Law,  he  meets  with  constant 
environment  from  the  opinions  of  others  ;  and 
this  environment  does  have  its  influence  in 
shaping  him. 

No    man   has  anv   mode  of  thought  that  is 


l8o  HEALTH,   STRENGTH 

absolutely  and  unalterably  fixed,  until  he  comes 
into  the  knowledge  of  the  Law.  Then  all  his 
thoughts  begin  to  adjust  themselves  to  his 
knowledge  of  absolute  truth,  and  gradually 
the  entire  bulk  of  his  former  fixed  beliefs 
(his  body)  begins  to  change. 

It  does  not  change  its  type,  but  its  type 
begins  to  relax,  so  as  to  admit  of  a  series  of 
all-over  improvements,  corresponding  with  his 
revised  beliefs  in  absolute  truth  ;  the  truth 
that  all  is  life ;  and,  therefore,  good  and 
desirable. 

When  a  man  arrives  at  the  knowledge  of 
this  one  mighty  and  absolute  truth,  he  has 
a  firm  foundation  under  him  for  the  first  time 
in  the  history  of  the  race.  He  now  has  a 
logical  basis  of  fact  from  which  to  make  a 
new  statement  of  himself.  The  statement  of 
himself  which  he  has  inherited  is  not,  and 
never  has  been,  a  statement  for  which  he,  as 
a  reasoning  creature,  is  responsible.  It  is  a 
statement  of  the  developing  animalhood  of  all 
the  past,  which  has  culminated  in  him,  and 
which  he  has  accepted  in  unconsciousness  of 
the  fact  that  he  could  make  a  statement  that 
would  suit  him  better. 

But  he  could  make  no  better  statement  so 
long   as  he  believed   himself  to  be  a  creation 


BEAUTY   AND   OPULENCE  151 

of  some  force  outside  of  himself.  He  could 
make  no  better  statement  so  long  as  he  did 
not  know  by  what  means  his  present  state- 
ment had  been  achieved  ;  he  could  not  even 
make  any  special  change  in  the  statement  of 
himself;  he  was  helpless  as  a  log  in  his  ignor- 
ance of  the  Law,  and  of  his  own  power  under 
the  Law.  And  so  the  same  statement  simply 
kept  repeating  itself  over  and  over  as  the  race 
proceeded,  without  any  marked  departure  from 
the  fixed  type,  until  now. 

But  now  the  greatest  truth  that  has  ever 
dawned  on  the  race  is  here ;  the  absolute  truth 
that  all  is  life ;  that  disease,  death  and  old  age 
are  erroneous  statements  regarding  life ;  and 
that  this  truth  simply  awaits  universal  recogni- 
tion in  order  that  its  vitalising  influence  shall 
be  expressed  in  one  unbroken  current  through 
all  the  members  of  the  race. 

I  refer  again  to  that  wonderful  book,  the 
Bible.  "  Believe,"  says  the  Bible,  "  and  you 
shall  be  saved."  How  can  belief  save  a  man 
unless  he  is  all  mind  ? 

Believe  in  whom  ? 

"  Believe  in  God  "  ;  these  are  the  words. 

Believe  in  the  power  of  the  Law ;  these  are 
equivalent  words. 

God  and  man  are  one  ;    the  Law  and    man 


I 82  HEALTH,   STRENGTH 

are  one.  God,  the  Law,  is  subjective  man.  The 
race  is  God,  the  Law,  made  objective. 

The  Law  being  the  unchangeable  Life-Prin- 
ciple, it  cannot  be  diseased  and  it  cannot  die. 
Intelligence  may  weaken  in  its  recognition  of 
the  Law  on  the  unconscious  plane,  and  this 
weakening  may  be  called  disease.  Or  it  may 
cease  to  recognise  it  altogether  on  the  un- 
conscious plane,  and  this  will  be  called  death; 

Is  it  really  disease  and  death?  Certainly  not. 
It  is  simply  the  individual  cessation  of  any 
farther  power  to  recognise  life  ;  but  it  is  not 
the  death  of  life. 

Non-recognition  of  life,  life  that  is  self-existent 
and  eternal,  is  no  more  evidence  that  death 
exists  than  a  blind  man's  belief  in  darkness  is 
evidence  that  there  is  no  light. 

Therefore,  disease  is  error ;  it  is  a  mental 
mistake,  and  it  cannot  rightfully  be  called 
anything  else. 

If  you  knew  your  neighbour  was  labouring 
under  some  mistaken  opinion,  would  you  pre- 
scribe a  porous  plaster  and  a  dose  of  calomel 
in  order  to  change  it?  Would  you  not,  rather, 
expect  that  the  best  course  would  be  to  reason 
with  him  until  you  have  convinced  him  that  he 
was  in  an  error. 

Even  if  his  condition  of  error  had  culminated 


BEAUTY   AND   OPULENCE  1 83 

in  the  almost  total  destruction  of  his  mind,  and 
his  conduct  endangered  the  lives  of  those  about 
him,  so  that  he  had  to  be  tied  or  put  under 
the  influence  of  a  narcotic,  until  such  time  as 
the  truth  could  be  implanted  in  his  intelligence 
so  firmly  as  to  convince  him  of  his  mistake, 
would  not  this  course  be  more  reasonable  than 
the  former  one  ? 

If  I  have  made  it  clear  that  man,  as  to  his 
external  or  visible  side,  is  mind,  and  not  matter, 
I  know  that  every  reader  will  answer,  "  Yes." 

Being  actually  startled  with  this  idea  when  it 
was  first  presented  to  me,  I  kept  experimenting 
with  it,  until  I  demonstrated  that  it  would  work 
perfectly  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten. 

And  perhaps  the  strangest  part  of  it  is,  that 
in  making  the  argument  that  convinced  the 
patients  of  their  error  in  believing  in  disease, 
I  always  did  it  silently.  I  seldom  spoke  aloud 
to  any  of  them  ;  and  when  they  were  cured  they 
knew  no  more  of  my  method  than  when  they 
first  came.  Some  of  them  said  God  worked 
through  me  to  perform  the  cure.  Others 
believed  that  I  had  an  exceptionally  strong 
"  power  in  prayer,"  and  did  not  know  that 
prayer  and  every  other  form  of  leaning  and 
begging  were  as  far  as  possible  from  my 
method.      Some     unusually     ignorant     people 


184  HEALTH,   STRENGTH 

thought  it  a  species  of  witchery,  and  held  me 
in  great  awe.  It  came  to  be  believed  that  1 
could  raise  the  dead,  and  do  many  other  things 
that  I  was  not  able  to  do.  The  report  of  my 
power  over  disease  spread  far  and  wide  by  word 
of  mouth,  and  people  came  to  me  from  across 
the  continent,  not  only  to  be  cured,  but  to  know 
how  it  was  done. 

It  was  done  by  thought  transference,  but  it 
was  the  transference  of  a  very  unusual  character 
of  thought. 

In  the  early  pages  of  this  book  I  tried  to 
establish  the  fact  that  thoughts  are  things. 
They  are  substantial,  though,  usually  invisible 
entities  ;  and  it  is  in  the  power  of  the  thinker 
to  send  them  from  him  into  the  organisms  of 
others,  where  they  are  not  only  the  messengers, 
but  the  messages  themselves,  that  are  trans- 
ferred from  one  brain  to  another.  They  leave 
the  strong  and  positive  brain  of  the  person  who 
is  grounded  in  the  belief  that  there  is  no  disease 
and  no  death,  and  they  take  their  abode  in  the 
brain  of  the  one  whose  beliefs  are  so  lacking  in 
knowledge  of  the  absolute  truth,  as  to  render 
him  negative  to  higher  thought  forms  than  his 
own  ;  and  here  they  remain,  carrying  conviction 
to  the  patient,  of  his  mistake,  and  thus  healing 
him    by   changing    his    belief.       In    healing    a 


BEAUTY   AND   OPULENCE  I 85 

patient,  there  are  two  points  to  be  noticed  in 
the  silent  argument  applied. 

The  first  is  a  consideration  of  the  fact  that 
disease  of  the  body  is  of  mental  origin  ;  it  is 
the  dis-ease,  lack  of  ease,  or  mistaken  concep- 
tion of  the  Law  showing  forth  in  the  body. 
It  is  the  fruit  of  mistaken  reasoning  made 
apparent  to  the  senses.  This  truth  is  universal. 
But  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  it  is  universal, 
and,  therefore,  of  the  first  importance,  it  goes 
for  nothing  unless  individual  application  can 
be  made  of  it. 

The  Law  is  one  thing  and  the  understanding 
of  the  Law  is  another  thing.  The  Law — in 
its  majesty — simply  is.  Man,  who  is  the  in- 
dividualised interpreter  of  the  Law,  changes 
perpetually  ;  changes  in  proportion  as  he  knows 
more  and  more. 

It  seems  easier  to  define  the  Law  than  to 
define  the  man.  He  is  a  bundle  of  desires. 
By  these  desires,  he  is  related  to  everything 
that  he  desires.  The  existence  of  his  desires 
proves  conclusively  that  what  he  desires  exists, 
and  is  for  him.  His  desires — taken  in  the 
aggregate — are  the  sure  prophecy  of  their  own 
fulfilment.  They  point  towards  happiness, 
and  thus  include  health,  opulence  and  beauty. 

Under    no     influence    imaginable    but    that 


1 86  HEALTH,   STRENGTH 

power  vested  in  the  Law  of  Attraction  could 
the  man  be  related  to  the  object  of  his  desires 
in  a  way  to  insure  their  fulfilment.  He  is, 
therefore,  allied  to  the  Law  of  Attraction  and 
dependent  upon  it. 

But  he  is  not  dependent  upon  it  as  a  slave 
is  dependent  on  his  master.  He  depends  upon 
it  as  a  freeman  depends  upon  his  own  efforts. 
He  knows  that  it  will  serve  him  in  every 
effort  he  may  make. 

These  efforts  are  all  intellectual  ;  they  are 
all  of  them  the  strivings  of  an  earnest  soul  in 
the  pursuit  of  truth.  Knowledge  of  truth  is 
the  only  saviour,  and  he  knows  it.  Knowledge 
of  truth  means  greater  knowledge  of  the  power 
of  the  Law. 

This  is  what  he  desires  ;  greater  knowledge 
of  the  power  of  the  Law.  All  of  his  desires, 
even  unknown  to  himself,  tend  to  this.  Each 
acquisition  of  knowledge  he  may  make  helps 
to  liberate  him  from  the  bonds  of  his  past 
ignorance ;  from  the  wretched  beliefs  that 
made  themselves  manifest  as  disease,  old  age 
and   death. 

Knowledge  is  power,  and  power  is  freedom, 
and  freedom  is  happiness.  This  is  the  happi- 
ness that  includes  all  those  minor  details  of 
health,  opulence  and  beauty. 


BEAUTY   AND   OPULENCE  1 87 

Therefore,  as  close  a  definition  of  man  as 
we  can  come  to  is  to  call  him  an  ever-growing 
desire  ;  approximating — in  his  growth — more 
and  more  closely  to  a  comprehension  of  the 
power  of  the  Law. 

The  more  a  man  perceives  of  the  power  of 
the  Law,  the  more  of  that  power  he  incarnates 
in  himself.  He  thus  becomes,  at  every  step 
of  his  advancement,  to  use  an  old  phrase, 
"  nearer  to  God  " ;  a  state  of  at-one-ment  with 
the  Law,  that  theologians  would  call  making 
the  atonement. 

Perceiving,  then,  that  man  is  a  bundle  of 
desires,  all  of  which  point  to  the  attainment 
of  truth,  we  recognise  his  desires  as  legitimate  ; 
and  in  our  silent  reasoning  with  him  we  strive 
to  justify  him  in  his  own  estimation  by  re- 
moving the  prejudice  he  has  always  had  against 
desire. 

The  masses  of  mankind  are  not  only  pre- 
judiced against  their  own  desires,  but  they 
are  afraid  of  them.  Their  knowledge  of  desire 
is  confined  to  the  many  mistakes  heaped  upon 
it  by  the  experimenting  ignorance  that  neces- 
sarily marks  the  growth  of  an  infant  race. 

Therefore,  to  justify  the  patient,  in  the 
promptings  of  his  own  spirit,  as  expressed  in 
desire,  is  one  of  the   first  efforts  of  the  silent 


I  88  HEALTH,   STRENGTH 

argument  made  to  him.  He  is  doubtful  whether 
he  has  any  true  right  to  live  at  all.  He  sees 
himself  a  bundle  of  desires,  all  leading — as  he 
believes — to  narrow  and  selfish  ends.  He  does 
not  see  the  great  object  towards  which  the  race 
is  being  drawn,  and  into  which  it  will  all  be 
harmonised  ;  his  opinion  of  his  own  utility,  as 
a  member  of  society,  is  more  than  doubtful  ; 
and  he  says,  "  I  would  like  to  live  and  get 
well,  if  it  is  God's  will" 

His  intelligence  has  yielded  him  no  truth 
that  will  justify  his  desire  to  live  and  get  well  ; 
and  so  he  leaves  it  for  someone  else  to  decide. 
He  is  completely  off  his  own  base ;  and  in 
endeavouring  to  rest  upon  another  he  has 
become  as  a  plant  whose  roots  are  pulled  up 
out  of  the  ground,  and  can  find  no  nourish- 
ment in  that  condition. 

And  so  it  becomes  the  effort  of  the  silent 
argument  addressed  to  him,  to  strengthen  him 
in  his  belief  of  himself;  to  justify  his  desires 
to  him,  and  to  establish  the  ego  firmly  in  his 
thought. 

This  gives  him  mental  strength,  and  as  his 
mental  condition  is  his  bodily  condition  it  gives 
him  bodily  strength. 

To  recognise  desire  in  the  patient  is  to 
recognise  what  he  fails  to  recognise  in  himself. 


BEAUTY   AND   OPULENCE  1 89 

This  recognition  on  the  part  of  another  has 
the  same  effect  in  his  body  as  if  he  recognised 
it  intelligently  and  consciously  himself.  And 
so  the  patient  may  be  healed  without  being 
aware  of  the  character  of  the  great  truth  that 
has  been  poured  into  his  body. 

His  body,  being  to  a  degree  a  fixed  thing, 
possesses  less  vitality  than  his  active  thought ; 
and  very  much  less  than  the  thought  of  the 
person  effecting  the  cure.  The  body  of  the 
patient,  then,  is  decidedly  negative,  in  com- 
parison with  the  living  truth  being  poured 
into  it,  and  it  gives  an  unconscious  response 
to  it ;  in  the  meantime,  the  patient's  own 
thought  is  comparatively  untouched.  At  least, 
it  has  not  been  sufficiently  influenced  by  the 
more  positive  thought  of  the  healer  to  come 
to  an  understanding  of  the  truth,  by  which 
the  body  is  healed. 

That  the  patient's  thought  is  more  or  less 
impressed  by  the  healer's  more  positive  thought, 
is  often  proved  by  the  questions  he  asks  after- 
wards ;  but  I  have  never  known  a  case  where 
his  thought — his  active  intelligence — received 
the  whole  truth,  as  communicated  silently  by 
the  healer.  The  patient,  in  submitting  himself 
to  the  healer,  does  practically  submit  to  him 
his   own    beliefs,    in   order   to   have  the  healer 


190  HEALTH,   STRENGTH 

change  them.  But  he  does  this  when  he  con- 
sults a  physician  ;  the  physician  then  proceeds 
to  change  the  patient's  belief  by  his  own  more 
positive  belief  in  the  power  of  medicine,  and 
he  very  often  succeeds  in  doing  it. 

Where  a  person  rejects  the  new  truth,  the  truth 
that  there  is  no  disease,  and  refuses  to  submit  his 
beliefs  to  manipulation  by  the  mental  method,  he 
creates  a  barrier  that  prevents  the  natural  tend- 
ency of  higher  thought  to  seek  its  level.  But  even 
in  this  case,  the  higher  and  more  positive  thought 
will  eventually  break  clown  the  barrier  and  enter. 

Even  now,  in  this  silent  way,  there  can  be 
no  high  and  positive  thought  generating  any- 
where that  does  not  raise  the  average  thought 
of  the  entire  race  a  little  higher. 

The  patient  who  believes  in  the  power  of 
another's  thought  to  cure  him  removes  all 
barriers  to  the  entrance  of  that  thought,  and 
soon  feels  the  effect  of  it.  It  was  on  this  plan 
that  Jesus  healed  ;  and  it  was  his  knowledge 
of  the  matter  that  caused  him  to  say,  "  Accord- 
ing to  thy  faith,  so  be  it  unto  thee."  He  made 
no  test  cases  of  unbelievers  ;  he  knew  he  was 
hedged  out  of  their  minds.  Nor  did  he  heal 
all  he  attempted  to  heal.  For,  "when  he  went 
down  into  Capernaum,  he  did  no  mighty  works 
there,  because  of  their  unbelief." 


BEAUTY   AND   OPULENCE  191 

Individuality  is  a  very  potent  thing  indeed. 
It  stands  above  all  things  except  the  Law.  It 
shall  not  be  set  aside  and  overcome  even  that 
the  person  be  made  healthy  and  opulent  and 
beautiful.  Clothed  in  the  rags  of  error,  and 
too  wretched  to  make  farther  effort  in  its  own 
behalf,  it  is  still  the  seed  germ  of  all  future 
growth  ;  its  ego  is  obscured,  but  not  destroyed  ; 
and  no  power  can  prevail  against  it  until  it 
resigns  itself. 

I  cannot  enter  the  realm  of  your  ego  without 
your  consent.  I  may  conquer  you  bodily  and 
make  a  slave  of  you,  only  to  groan  in  despair 
at  the  knowledge  that  the  independent  ego 
within  your  breast  scorns  me,  and  holds  fast 
in  its  own  right  every  thought  that  fortifies 
the  citadel  where  it  resides — unassailable,  in- 
destructible, haughty. 

A  realisation  of  the  majesty  of  the  undying 
ego  is  a  strong  point  in  the  argument  addressed 
to  the  patient.  The  more  it  is  dwelt  upon, 
the  more  firm  and  invincible  it  seems,  and 
the  more  irresistible  its  demands.  Indeed,  as 
its  strength  grows  upon  one's  thought,  the 
desires  that  proceed  from  it  seem  commands 
that  no  power  can  disobey ;  it  becomes  a 
focus  for  the  centralisation  of  all  things  desir- 
able ;    and    to   the   opened    spiritual    sense   all 


192  III'  \I.TII,   STRENGTH 

things  appear  to  be   drifting  to  it    in   helpless 
obedience  to  its  calm  mastery. 

Thus  is  individuality  more  powerfully  indi- 
vidualised in  the  patient,  until  a  sense  of 
strength  comes  to  him  that  causes  him  to  lose 
sight  of  the  negative  beliefs  that  formerly  held 
a  place  in  his  mind  ;  and  he  knows  that  he  is 
well,  though  he  knows  not  why. 

And  so  the  two  points  in  removing  his  false 
beliefs  have  been  freely  used  ;  sometimes  one 
and  sometimes  the  other,  as  each  in  its  turn 
appeared  the  more  impressive. 

There  are  occasions  when  it  is  enough  for 
him  who  is  required  to  make  this  silent  argu- 
ment to  merely  bring  himself  into  a  clear  per- 
ception of  the  fact  that  there  is  no  disease  and 
no  death.  This  is  rising  into  the  realm  of 
absolute  truth,  and  seeing  all  things  from  that 
standpoint  ;  but  it  is  a  universal  and  not  an 
individual  argument.  The  individual  argument 
is  that  which  perceives  the  ego,  and  makes 
every  effort  to  strengthen  it  by  justifying  its 
desires  to  itself. 

That  thousands  of  cures  are  made  by  the 
mental  method,  which  I  have  faintly  described, 
no  person  who  has  taken  the  pains  to  investi- 
gate the  matter  can  doubt.  The  sweeping 
charges   brought   acrainst    the    method    rest   on 


BEAUTY   AND   OPULENCE  I93 

no  better  foundation  than  ignorance  and  pre- 
judice. Many  people  are  wilfully  blind, 
believing  it  to  their  interest  to  learn  no  more 
than  they  now  know.  For  my  part,  I  let  go 
all  hold  of  the  past  years  ago ;  resolved  to 
remain  no  longer  in  the  worn-out  fields  of 
thought  that  I  so  heartily  despised,  no  matter 
where  a  fresher  and  braver  line  of  thought 
might  land  me.  I  was  so  tired  of  the  dead 
past,  that  I  knew  I  had  nothing  to  lose  in 
leaving  it,  and  it  was  with  a  feeling  akin  to 
that  of  the  most  reckless  voyageur,  that  I 
plunged  into  The  New. 

And  who  can  tell  of  the  reward  that  has 
met  me  every  day? 

Each  day  the  light  shines  a  little  brighter  on 
this  wonderful  journey  through  the  realm  of 
The  New.  Old  beliefs  are  fading  fast.  The 
vitalising  power  of  the  new  and  positive  truth 
is  literally  making  me  over.  Each  opening  day 
is  met  by  a  brighter  recognition  of  all  the  joy 
it  holds  for  those  who  are  looking  for  joy,  and 
who  are  expecting  the  good,  and  not  the  evil ; 
until  little  by  little,  and  by  slow  degrees,  all 
power  to  recognise  the  evil  is  fading  from  my 
intellect ;  and  only  the  power  to  perceive  the 
good  is  remaining. 

Do  you  know  what  this  means  ? 
N 


194  HEALTH,   STRENGTH 

It  means  that  heaven  really  exists  ;  that  It 
lies  all  about  our  daily  pathway  ;  and  that — at 
last — through  the  unveiling  of  our  mental  per- 
ceptions, we  are  growing  into  a  recognition  of 
it.  There  is  now  a  more  subtle  suggestion  of 
beauty  to  me  in  the  tiny  seed-pod  than  there 
was  once  in  the  splendid  promise  of  a  gorgeous 
dawn,  clothed  in  its  translucent  garments  of 
pink  and  amethyst  and  blue  ;  all  trimmed  with 
gold-embroidered  fleece  of  downy  white.  And 
there  is  more  happiness  in  the  unexpected 
flower  by  the  roadside  than  the  richest  pageant 
could  once  yield  to  me. 

Heaven  is  here,  but  it  only  unfolds  itself  to 
those  who  unfold  to  meet  it. 

I  laugh  at  the  idea  of  going  to  a  heaven  more 
beautiful  than  this  world,  before  we  have  learned 
to  see  the  beauty  that  meets  us  here  at  every 
step. 

What  could  we  do  with  more  beauty,  when 
we  are  blind  to  that  which  we  have  ? 

Before  closing  this  chapter  I  will  answer  an 
objection  that  is  often  brought  against  the 
mental  method  of  healing.  There  is  an  idea 
quite  prevalent  that  any  mental  application  of 
power  must  be  purely  mesmeric  or  hypnotic. 

Just  what  the  relation  of  hypnotism  to  mental 
healing  is,  I   do  not  know ;   but   I    know  this : 


BEAUTY   AND   OPULENCE  195 

that  while  the  operator  in  hypnotism  gains 
control  of  his  patient  by  the  subjugation  of  the 
patient's  will  to  his  own  will,  the  mental  healer 
does  nothing  of  the  kind. 

Indeed,  what  the  mental  healer  does  is  just 
the  opposite.  He  knows  that  the  entire  result 
of  his  efforts  in  healing  depends  on  his  power 
to  strengthen  his  patient's  will. 

The  mental  healer  has  learned  the  inestim- 
able value  of  individual  will,  and  has  cultivated 
his  own  will  by  a  calm  and  logical  perception 
of  its  power  and  its  value.  He  sees  that  it  is 
the  bulwark  of  his  own  character,  without 
which  he  would  take  his  position  among  the 
negative  forces  in  life,  whose  only  use  is  to 
be  expended  in  the  service  of  others. 

He  sees  that  his  will  is  his  only  salvation 
in  a  world  whose  law  of  growth  is  the  survival 
of  the  fittest,  and  it  assumes  such  proportions 
in  his  estimation  that  he  looks  on  it  as  the 
most  important  factor  in  his  make-up.  It 
kept  him  in  the  ascendency  on  the  brute 
plane,  and  it  is  pledged  to  hold  him  on  a 
level  with  the  most  progressive  on  the  intel- 
lectual plane. 

Realising,  then,  that  the  will  is  the  man,  he 
immediately  perceives  that  the  trouble  with 
the  patient  is  his  failure  to  recognise  his  own 


I96  HEALTH,   STRENGTH 

will.  Therefore,  instead  of  trying  to  weaken 
still  farther  the  patient's  will  by  subjugating 
it  to  his  own  will,  he  begins  to  strengthen  the 
will  of  the  patient  by  the  mental  argument 
he  understands  so  well. 

Surely  there  is  a  power  heretofore  unrecog- 
nised in  the  mind  of  man ;  a  power  that 
promises  so  much,  that  to  neglect  its  in- 
vestigation would  be  an  infinitely  greater  piece 
of  folly  than  to  turn  indifferently  from  a  col- 
lection of  treasures  richer  than  anyone  has 
ever  heaped  up  before. 

To  investigate  this  mighty  subject  is  all 
I  ask  of  the  reader. 

Health  and  strength  and  beauty  and  opulence 
are  in  it  in  greater  fulness  than  can  be  found 
in  the  whole  world  of  thought  outside  of  it. 

This  much  I  know. 


THE    RIVERSIDE    I'KKSS    LIMIII.l  .     LM  N  III  K' ill 


HOME  COURSE  IN  MENTAL  SCIENCE 

IN  TWENTY  SEPARATE  LESSONS 
By  Helen  Wilmans 

i.  Omnipresent  Life.  13.   Mental  Science  in  a  Race 

2.  Thought,  the  Body  Builder.  Movement. 

3.  Our  Beliefs.  14.   Mental    Science   incarnate 

4.  Denials.  in  Flesh  and  Blood. 

5.  Affirmations.  15.   Personality  and  Individual- 

6.  The  Soul  of  Things.  ity. 

7.  Faith   our   Guide   through  16.  The    Stone    the    Builders 

the  Dark.  Rejected. 

8.  Spirit  and  Body  are  One.         17.  A  Noble  Egoism  the  Foun- 

9.  Prayer  and  Self  Culture.  dation  for  Just  Action. 

10.  The     Power    behind     the     18.   Recognition    of   the    Will 

Throne.  the  Cure  of  Disease. 

11.  The     Power     above     the     19.   Practical  Healing. 

Throne.  20.   Posture  of  the  Will  Man. 

12.  The  King  on  his  Throne. 

The  Course  complete  in  separate  covers, 
Price  5  dols.  (21s.) 

"  FREEDOM  " 

7THIS  Paper  is  worthy  the  great  cause  it  represents.  It  is 
a  large  sixteen -page  weekly  confined  to  no  creed,  and 
advocating  no  "  ism  "  ;  but  simply  intent  upon  the  discovery  of 
new  truth,  and  presents  the  latest,  truly  scientific,  metaphysical 
ideas.  It  is  based  on  the  assumption  that  the  growth  of  man 
is  limitless  ;  that  he  has  the  inherent  power  to  conquer  every 
environment,  and  to  prove  himself  not  only  the  master  but  the 
creator  of  all  things  and  conditions.  It  is  published  by  the  most 
daring,  original  and  brilliant  writers  of  the  age, 

Helen  Wilmans  Post  and  C.  C.  Post. 
These  two  writers  have  come  to  the  front  in   the   discovery 
of  metaphysical  truth  so  rapidly  that  the  readers  and  students 
of  Mental  Science  cannot  afford  to  remain  ignorant  of  the  great 
things  they  are  presenting  to  the  public. 

Price   1   dol.   in  the  United   States. 
1  dol.  50  c.  (6s.  6d. )  in  foreign  countries. 


Address,    and    make    all    money   orders    payable    to    The 
Wilmans  Publishing  House,  Sea  Breeze,  Florida,  U.S.A. 

Supplied  in  England  by    G.    Osbond,    SciENTOR    House, 
Devonport,  Devon. 


NEW  THOUGHT  PUBLICATIONS 

59th  Thousand.    Post  8ro,  3s.  66.  net. 

IN  TUNE  WITH  THE  INFINITE;  or,  Full- 
ness of  Peace,  Power,  and  Plenty.  By  Ralph 
Waldo  Trine. 

"  To  point  out  the  great  facts  and  laws  underlying  the  workings  of  the 
interior,  spiritual,  thought  forces,  to  point  them  out  so  simply  and  so  clearly 
that  all  can  grasp  them,  that  all  can  take  them  and  infuse  them  into  every- 
day life,  so  as  to  mould  it  in  all  its  details  in  accordance  with  what  they 
would  have  it,  is  the  author's  purpose.  That  life  can  be  thus  moulded  by 
them  is  not  a  matter  of  mere  speculation  or  theory  with  him,  but  a  matter 
of  positive  knowledge." — From  the  Author's  Preface. 

Post  8vo,  3s.  66.  net.    Just  Published. 

DOMINION  AND  POWER.  By  C.  Brodie 
Patterson,  Author  of  "  New  Thought  Essays,"  Editor 
of  The  Arena  and  Mind. 

Post  8vo,  3s,  66.  net.    Rea6y  imme6iately. 

THE  WILL  TO  BE  WELL.  By  C.  Brodie 
Patterson. 


Prettily  boun6,  sm.  8vo,  Is,  net  each. 
BY   RALPH    WALDO    TRINE. 

THE     GREATEST     THING     EVER    KNOWN. 

i6th  Thousand. 

CHARACTER- BUILDING  —  THOUGHT 
POWER. 

EVERY  LIVING  CREATURE;  or,  Heart- 
Training  THROUGH   THE  ANIMAL   WORLD. 

B  Y  IV.  J.  COL  VILLE. 
FATE    MASTERED  — DESTINY    FULFILLED. 

By  W.  J.  Colville,  Author  of  "The  World's  Fair  Text- 
Book  of  Mental  Therapeutics." 


LONDON  :   GEORGE   BELL   &   SONS 
YORK    STREET,  COVENT    GARDEN,  W.C. 


Published  Quarterly,  is.  net ;  post  free  for  one  year,  5s. 


THE  HUMANE   REVIEW 

DEVOTED  TO  THE  ETHICS  OF  HUMANENESS 

IN  ALL  ITS  BRANCHES  AS  REGARDS 

BOTH  MEN  AND  ANIMALS 

1PECENT  numbers  have  contained  articles  on — Inhumanity 
in  Schools  ;  Capital  Punishment ;  Prison  Reform  ;  Mili- 
tarism ;  Claims  of  Native  Races ;  The  Art  of  the  People ; 
Hospital  Municipalisation  ;  Kinship  of  Men  and  Animals ; 
Vivisection  ;  Ethics  of  Sport  ;  Bird  Protection  ;  Slaughter- 
house Reform;  Vegetarianism;  Literary  Articles;  Reviews, 
etc. ;  comprising  contributions  from — 

II.  R.  Fox  Bourne,  Mrs  Mona  Caird,  Edward  Car- 
penter,  Annie  Cobden  -  Sanderson,  Hon.  Stephen 
Coleridge,  Lady  Florence  Dixie,  \V.  II.  Hudson, 
I)r  Ai.ex.  Jaim',  J.  C.  Kenworthy,  Mary  A.  Marks, 
Eustace  Miles,  Prof.  Howard  Moore,  the  late  William 
Morris,  Honnor  Morten,  Ouida,  Canon  Rawnslby, 
Elisee  Reci.us,  J.  M.  Robertson,  Henry  S.  Salt, 
Edmund  Selous,  Bernard  Shaw,  W.  J.  Stillman,  and 
Others. 


LONDON:      ERNEST       BELL 
0  YORK.  STREET,  COVENT  GARDEN 


3 1158  00575  3941 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


AA    001  299  328    3 


;  .,  .